Bovine immunodeficiency virus: a lentiviral infection
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Bovine immunodeficiency virus: a lentiviral infection Sandeep Bhatia • S. S. Patil • R. Sood
Received: 6 February 2013 / Accepted: 16 September 2013 / Published online: 27 September 2013 Ó Indian Virological Society 2013
Abstract The bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) is a lentivirus which is known to infect cattle worldwide. Though serological and genomic evidence of BIV in cattle has been found throughout the world, isolation of the virus has been reported only from few places. Very little is known about its impact on animal health status, pathogenesis and mode of transmission. BIV is considered generally non-pathogenic and is not known to cause any serious disease in cattle. BIV is genetically and antigenically related to Jembrana disease virus (JDV), the cause of an acute disease in Bali cattle (Bos javanicus) and human immunodeficiency virus, the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in human. Therefore, it is important to monitor the presence of BIV in cattle to keep vigil over its possible evolution in its natural host to emerge as pathogenic lentivirus like JDV. Differentiation of BIV infection in cattle from the acutely pathogenic JDV is important for diagnosis of the latter. Currently, BIV is considered as a safe model for understanding the complex genome of lentiviruses. Further research on BIV is indeed needed to elucidate its possible role in animal health as well as for insight into the molecular mechanisms adopted by related lentiviruses. Keywords Bovine immunodeficiency virus Lentiviruses Molecular biology
S. Bhatia (&) R. Sood High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL), Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Bhopal, India e-mail: [email protected] S. S. Patil Project Directorate on Animal Disease Monitoring and Surveillance (PD-ADMAS), Bengaluru, India
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Introduction The bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV) belongs to the lentivirus genus of the subfamily Orthoretrovirinae under Retroviridae family [50]. The members of Retroviridae family are characterized by the expression of a unique enzyme reverse transcriptase (RT). The RT enzyme facilitates the transcription of the RNA of the infectious virus to a complimentary DNA copy which is incorporated in the host’s cell nucleus as a ‘provirus’. The provirus remains latent for many years without doing any harm to the host. In presence of pre-disposing factors such as concurrent infection, stress or age, the provirus may get reactivated into infectious RNA virus and may initiate pathogenesis inside host. The BIV causes a persistent viral infection in cattle and buffalo. Infection with BIV has never been linked to a specific disease or clinically identifiable syndrome, but it has been associated with lymphadenopathy, lymphocytosis, central nervous system lesions, progressive weakness [22, 88], decreased milk yield [60], decreased lymphocytic blastogenic response [59] and bovine paraplegic syndrome [90]. Though enough experimental evidences are available to believe that BIV can cause immune dysfunction in anim
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