Serological Investigation of West Nile Virus (WNV) Infection in Cats and Dogs

Abstract

West Nile Virus, whose natural life cycle continues between birds and mosquitoes, causes neuropathic diseases in horses, cats, dogs, humans and other mammal animals. Particularly in recent years, as a result of the fact that the number of dam reservoirs have increased and areas where irrigated farming is applied have become widespread, depending on the increase in the population of stinger flies, the increase in various human and animal infections transmitted by these has reached remarkable levels. In this study, the presence/prevalence of WNV in cats and dogs around Burdur province was serologically searched using C-ELISA method. For this purpose, blood samples from 82 cats and 246 dogs of different race, gender and age that were not vaccinated against the so-called disease were taken into coagulant tubes. Besides, if there were any animals showing symptoms of disease among the sampled ones, the kind of the clinical symptoms and the housing/life conditions of the animals was broadly questioned. In the study, WNV specific antibody presence was detected in 0.41% of the tested dog blood serum (1/246) and in 1.22% of the cat blood serum (1/82). From the research log, the cat detected as positive turned out to be a two-year old, female, non-vaccinated Tekir stray cat and the dog was an owned, four-year old, female, regularly vaccinated hound dog. Both positive animals showed no clinical findings. Consequently, in this study, WNV presence was revealed in cats and dogs the Burdur region even though it was at low rates.