VERY VIRULENT INFECTIOUS BURSAL DISEASE

Authors

1 Animal Health Research Institute, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

2 Doorn Institute, Holland

3 TAD Pharmaceutical, GMBH, Cuxhaven, West-Germany

Abstract

Since the first outbreak of IBD in USA (Cosgrove, 1962), the disease had been reported in almost all parts of the world as reviewed by Faragher, (1971) and Okoye et al. (1984), and including Egypt (Ayoub and Malek, 1976). There are two recognized serotypes of IBDV, designated serotypes 1 and 11 (Jackwood, et al., 1982). Only serotype 1 IBD viruses have been known to cause naturally occurring disease in chick- ens. Recently, workers in USA have been isolated IBD viruses from "problem" broiler farms, that seem to be different from serotype, 1. These viruses are being classified as sub-type of serotype 1 or "variant" viruses. Subtypes are between 10 and 70 percent relatedness (Rosenberger and Cloud, 1985 and Giambrone, 1989). IBD has re-emerged as a major disease problem in the last three years characterized by severe clinical signs with higher than normal level of mortality, recorded in England, Danemark, Holland, Australia, Ireland and Middle East area including Jurdan, Syria and Israel (Box, 1989; Lutticken and Van der Marel, 1989 and Zahid, 1990). The characters of the re-emerged IBD, designated very virulent infectious bursal disease (VVIBD) was reviewed (Box, 1989). The objectives of this research were to record, isolate, identify and study the characters of 9-VVIBDV isolates obtained from 9-IBD affected farms selected from 9 governorates during an epidemic that had been occurred since June 1989 and could cover the country.

Main Subjects