Website for the Revue de Médecine Vétérinaire
Detail of the article
[Back]
For articles published from January, 2000, you can reach the complete article as a pdf file by clicking on "pdf " in the column "Links" of the table.
| Year : | 2002 |
| Tome : | 153 |
| Volume : | 10 |
| Pages : | 635-642 |
| Title : | Recent cases in the german poxvirus consulting laboratory |
| Authors : | S. ESSBAUER, H. MEYER, O.-R. KAADEN and M. PFEFFER. |
| Summary : | Designated as poxvirus consulting laboratory by the Robert-Koch-Institute (Berlin), we provide scientific advice regarding any aspects of poxviruses affecting different animals e.g. cats, elephants, swines, birds, and men. Human smallpox was eradicated in the 1980s, and consequently with diminishing vaccination a generation susceptible for other zoonotic poxviruses grows up. Although the epidemiology of orthopoxvirus infections in Germany remains unclear in the last few years we observed a drastic increase of zoonotic poxvirus infections with three case reports on human «cowpox» infections presented here. In two cases we could only retrospectively trace the source of the orthopoxvirus to cats based on seroconversion. In one case a young cat transmitted the virus to three humans whom all developed clinical pox lesions. Beneath the zoonotic potential of cowpoxviruses (CPXV), these viruses exhibit a broad host range. In the year 2000 two elephants (Elephas maximus) of a German travelling circus revealed a fatal orthopoxvirus infection. The animals exhibited many poxviral lesions and died of this infection. Thus we provide the modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) for vaccination of exotic or expensive animals. Classical virological and serological methods as well as molecular biological techniques including PCR, sequencing and restriction fragment patterns of the newly isolated poxviruses show a very close relationship of the investigated CPXV isolates irrespective of their host species. These findings and our long-term data give evidence of an increase of orthopoxviruses infections in animals and men and underline the importance of further investigations on virus transmission and orthopoxvirus reservoirs. |
| Keywords : | poxvirus - cowpox - orthopoxvirus - zoonosis - cats - elephants. |
| Correspondence : | S. ESSBAUER |
| Adress : | Tel. 0049-89-2180-2028 - Fax 0049- 89-2180-2597 - email [email protected] |
| Link : |
[Back]