New Parvovirus Associated with Serum Hepatitis in Horses after Inoculation of Common Biological Product.

Emerging infectious diseases 2018 Feb

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Equine serum hepatitis (i.e., Theiler's disease) is a serious and often life-threatening disease of unknown etiology that affects horses. A horse in Nebraska, USA, with serum hepatitis died 65 days after treatment with equine-origin tetanus antitoxin. We identified an unknown parvovirus in serum and liver of the dead horse and in the administered antitoxin. The equine parvovirus-hepatitis (EqPV-H) shares <50% protein identity with its phylogenetic relatives of the genus Copiparvovirus. Next, we experimentally infected 2 horses using a tetanus antitoxin contaminated with EqPV-H. Viremia developed, the horses seroconverted, and acute hepatitis developed that was confirmed by clinical, biochemical, and histopathologic testing. We also determined that EqPV-H is an endemic infection because, in a cohort of 100 clinically normal adult horses, 13 were viremic and 15 were seropositive. We identified a new virus associated with equine serum hepatitis and confirmed its pathogenicity and transmissibility through contaminated biological products.

Citation

Thomas J Divers, Bud C Tennant, Arvind Kumar, Sean McDonough, John Cullen, Nishit Bhuva, Komal Jain, Lokendra Singh Chauhan, Troels Kasper Høyer Scheel, W Ian Lipkin, Melissa Laverack, Sheetal Trivedi, Satyapramod Srinivasa, Laurie Beard, Charles M Rice, Peter D Burbelo, Randall W Renshaw, Edward Dubovi, Amit Kapoor. New Parvovirus Associated with Serum Hepatitis in Horses after Inoculation of Common Biological Product. Emerging infectious diseases. 2018 Feb;24(2):303-310