DIAGNOSIS OF MALIGNANT CATARRHAL FEVER BY POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION AMPLIFICATION OF ALCELAPHINE HERPESVIRUS-1 SEQUENCE

We derived sequence information from cloned HindIII fragment ''D'' of alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 strain WC11, an agent of malignant catarrhal fever (MCF). Based on this sequence, oligonucleotide primers were sel ected and synthesized for use in a polymerase chain reaction amplifica tion assay. These primers were used to test samples of total nucleic a cids isolated from multiple tissues taken from an Indian gaur (Bos gau rus gaurus) at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in San Diego, California (USA) which had clinical signs of a natural infection of MCF. Six of eight tissue samples examined had amplifiable sequences present. A nuc leic acid probe complementary to the sequence of the original clone be tween the primer sites also was synthesized and used to confirm the id entity of the amplified viral sequences, thus providing a diagnosis of MCF at the molecular level.