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Exotics may hold key to African Horse Sickness
Blood samples taken from exotic imports may hold the key to the way in which African
Horse Sickness is spread.
The Horse Trust's working group on AHS has identified that rhinoceros, giraffe and zebra
are all known to carry high levels of antibody to the AHS disease. While the Office
International Epizootique (OIE) regulations prevent importation of potentially infected
animals from areas where AHS is endemic, there are no regulations on movement of animals
within Europe.
"Research shows African rhinos have high levels of antibody to AHS, but no-one knows if
they are a risk because no-one has blood-sampled them," says the chairman of the group
Paul Jepson, chief executive and resident veterinary surgeon at The Horse Trust. "Work
done on serum samples in Namibia and South Africa showed 70% were AHS antibody positive
- but as this work was done before the most recent tests were developed, no attempt was
made to look for virus.
"If AHS is confirmed in the UK, zoos will inevitably become involved and we would need
to look at equidae and rhinos, especially where risk of virus transfer to vector populations"
On behalf of the Animal Health Pirbright laboratories, Dr Philip Mellor appealed for
veterinarians undertaking blood sampling of imported rhinos, giraffe or zebra to send
0.5ml of that blood sample to Pirbright. It would then be analysed without charge for
serotype, antibody and antigen, evaluation of replication and all variants of bluetongue
and equine encephalitis.
"Access to blood samples of exotic imports (not animals born in European zoos or wildlife
parks) will give us unprecedented insight into the development of this deadly disease in
the wild," Dr Mellor said.
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