| Author |
LJ TING*, MS LEE, TS HUANG, CC HUANG, ST KUO, FLEE, MH JONG, JR SHIAU, SYLIN |
| Summary |
Bluetongue is an arthropod-borne, infectious viral disease of domestic and wild ruminants. The disease occurs throughout tropical and temperate regions where the vectors such as Culicoides species, responsibJe for transn;iittjng the virus are present (Gibbs and Greiner 1994, Osburn 1994). Sheep are the most severelv affected livestock species, whereas cattle and goats are usually asymptomatic reservoir hosts (MacLachlan 1994). To date, at least 24 serotypes of bluetongue virus (BTV) have been identified. Several methods including virus neutralisation (Howell and others 1970), plaque neutralisation (Davies and Blackburn 1971), plaque inhibition (Afshar 1994) and fluorescence inhibition (Blackwell and Lunt 1996) have been developed for serotyping. Recently, genetic typing by reverse transcribed PCR (RT-PCR) and
nucleotide sequencing was also used to differentiate various serotypes of BTV in Australia and the USA (McColl and Gould 1991, Wilson and chase 1993). This short communication deseribes the isolation and identification of BTV from goats in Taiwans, it is also the first repotr of BTV in clonically healthy goats in Taiwan.
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