Mk. Bahmani et al., VARIED PREVALENCE OF BORNA-DISEASE VIRUS-INFECTION IN ARABIC, THOROUGHBRED AND THEIR CROSSBRED HORSES IN IRAN, Virus research, 45(1), 1996, pp. 1-13
Borna disease virus (BDV) naturally infects horses and sheep and induc
es progressive poliomeningoencephalomyelitis. Here, BDV recombinant pr
oteins of the first open reading frame (ORF-I; coding for p40 nucleopr
otein) and the second ORF-II (coding for p24 polymerase cofactor) were
immunoblotted with plasma derived from 72 healthy (28 Arabic, 17 thor
oughbred and 27 cross-bred) race horses at Tehran in Iran to detect an
ti-BDV antibodies. In addition, their peripheral blood mononuclear cel
ls (PBMCs) were also examined for BDV RNA by a nested reverse transcri
ptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) at ORE-II. The prevalence of
BDV antibodies and/or RNA was 41.2% in Arabic, 23.5% in thoroughbred,
and 33.3% in cross-bred horses, but only 17.9, 5.9, and 11.1% of them,
respectively, showed positive signals for both BDV antibodies and RNA
. Especially, cross-bred horses showed a higher prevalence for BDV RNA
, which was detected only in females. In addition, significantly highe
r prevalence for BDV RNA was observed in Arabic males and thoroughbred
females. The BDV prevalence did not increase with aging of the horse.
Sequencing at the region of BDV derived from Iranian horses revealed
a slight difference from those of Japanese horse- and European horse-d
erived BDVs even in the amino acid residues, although those in the thr
ee groups of Iranian horses were quite similar. Thus, the varied preva
lence of BDV was observed with the horse strain or sex in Iranian hors
es, although BDV sequences were very similar among all three groups in
Iran compared with those derived from other countries.