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Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) causes an acute vesicular disease of farm animals. The development of successful control strategies is limited by an incomplete understanding of the immune response to FMDV. Dendritic cells (DC) mediate the induction of immunity to…

Neospora caninum is an intracellular protozoan parasite which is a major cause of abortion in cattle worldwide. It forms persistent infections which recrudesce during pregnancy leading to foetal infection and in a proportion of cases, abortion. The mechanisms underlying…

Developing vaccines for livestock provides researchers with the opportunity to perform efficacy testing in the natural hosts. This enables the evaluation of different strategies, including definition of effective antigens or antigen combinations, and improvement in delivery…

This paper describes the improvement of a rapid diagnostic test for the detection of rinderpest virus (RPV) at pen-side and the development of a similar test for the detection of another Morbillivirus, peste de petits ruminants virus (PPRV). Using the Svanova Biotech format…

The Global Rinderpest Eradication Program (GREP) aimed to eradicate rinderpest by 2010 and it is widely believed to have been successful. An integral part of the program was the submission of samples from suspect rinderpest positive animals to a local Reference Laboratory…

Bluetongue is a major infectious disease of ruminants that is caused by bluetongue virus (BTV). In this study, we analyzed virulence and genetic differences of (i) three BTV field strains from Italy maintained at either a low (L strains) or high (H strains) passage number in…

Background: The rate at which viruses replicate and disseminate in competent arthropod vectors is limited by the temperature of their environment, and this can be an important determinant of geographical and seasonal limits to their transmission by arthropods in temperate…

African horse sickness (AHS) is a lethal viral disease of equids, which is transmitted by Culicoides midges that become infected after biting a viraemic host. The use of live attenuated vaccines has been vital for the control of this disease in endemic regions. However…

West Nile virus (WNV) has re-emerged as an important pathogen for humans and horses, which are considered to be incidental ‘dead-end’ hosts. We have demonstrated that horses are susceptible to experimental infection with WNV and that horses infected with either WNV lineage 1…