Dataset Information

New insight into dolphin morbillivirus phylogeny and epidemiology in the northeast Atlantic: opportunistic study in cetaceans stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coasts.

ABSTRACT: Screening Atlantic cetacean populations for Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) is essential to understand the epidemiology of the disease. In Europe, Portugal and Spain have the highest cetacean stranding rates, mostly due to the vast extension of coastline. Morbillivirus infection has been associated with high morbidity and mortality in cetaceans, especially in outbreaks reported in the Mediterranean Sea. However, scarce information is available regarding this disease in cetaceans from the North-East Atlantic populations. The presence of CeMV genomic RNA was investigated by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR in samples from 279 specimens stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coastlines collected between 2004 and 2015.A total of sixteen animals (n?=?16/279, 5.7 %) were positive. The highest prevalence of DMV was registered in striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) (n?=?14/69; 20.3 %), slightly higher in those collected in Galicia (n?=?8/33; 24.2 %) than in Portugal (n?=?6/36; 16.7 %).Phylogenetic analysis revealed that, despite the low genetic distances between samples, the high posterior probability (PP) values obtained strongly support the separation of the Portuguese and Galician sequences in an independent branch, separately from samples from the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. Furthermore, evidence suggests an endemic rather than an epidemic situation in the striped dolphin populations from Portugal and Galicia, since no outbreaks have been detected and positive samples have been detected annually since 2007, indicating that this virus is actively circulating in these populations and reaching prevalence values as high as 24 % among the Galician samples tested.

SUBMITTER: Bento MC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5002201 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

New insight into dolphin morbillivirus phylogeny and epidemiology in the northeast Atlantic: opportunistic study in cetaceans stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coasts.

Bento Maria Carolina Rocha de Medeiros MC Eira Catarina Isabel Costa Simões CI Vingada José Vitor JV Marçalo Ana Luisa AL Ferreira Marisa Cláudia Teixeira MC Fernandez Alfredo Lopez AL Tavares Luís Manuel Morgado LM Duarte Ana Isabel Simões Pereira AI

BMC veterinary research 20160826 1

<h4>Background</h4>Screening Atlantic cetacean populations for Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) is essential to understand the epidemiology of the disease. In Europe, Portugal and Spain have the highest cetacean stranding rates, mostly due to the vast extension of coastline. Morbillivirus infection has been associated with high morbidity and mortality in cetaceans, especially in outbreaks reported in the Mediterranean Sea. However, scarce information is available regarding this disease in cetaceans ...[more]

PMID: 27566667

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Project description:Immunology of marine mammals is a relatively understudied field and its monitoring plays an important role in the individual and group management of these animals, along with an increasing value as an environmental health indicator. This study was aimed at implementing the knowledge on the immune response in cetaceans stranded along the Italian coastline to provide a baseline useful for assessing the immune status of bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus) and striped (Stenella coeruleoalba) dolphins. In particular, since the Mediterranean Sea is considered a heavily polluted basin, a comparison with animals living in open waters such as the Atlantic Ocean was made. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded spleen, thymus, and lymph node tissues from 16 animals stranded along Italian and 11 cetaceans from the Canary Island shores were sampled within 48 h from death. Information regarding stranding sites, gender, and age as well as virologic, microbiological, and parasitological investigations, and the cause and/or the death mechanism were also collected in order to carry out statistical analyses. Selected tissues were routinely stained with hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) and with immunohistochemical techniques (IHC). For IHC analysis, anti-human CD5 monoclonal mouse antibody to identify T lymphocytes, CD20 monoclonal mouse antibody for the identification of mature B lymphocytes and HLA-DR antigen (alpha-chain) monoclonal mouse antibody for the identification of the major histocompatibility complex type II were previously validated for both species by Western-blotting technique. T-test method applied to quantitative evaluation of IHC positive cells showed a significant relationship between the number of (expression) of CD20 stained lymphocytes and normal and hypoplastic lymph nodes, respectively. No other significant correlations were noticed. Analyses for organochlorines (OC) compounds were performed in animals (n°5) having frozen blubber tissue available. A simple linear regression was calculated to predict if the amount of OCs could influence the number of inflammatory cell subpopulations and a moderate negative correlation was found between the presence of high quantity of contaminants and the number of T lymphocytes. Future analysis should be aimed to understand the effect of the major immunomodulatory pathogens on sub-populations of B and T cells.

Dataset Information

New insight into dolphin morbillivirus phylogeny and epidemiology in the northeast Atlantic: opportunistic study in cetaceans stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coasts.

Publications

New insight into dolphin morbillivirus phylogeny and epidemiology in the northeast Atlantic: opportunistic study in cetaceans stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coasts.

Similar Datasets

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