The First Molecular Detection of Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus (Caev) in Iran

Caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus (CAEV) belongs to the lentivirus subfamily of retroviruses [1] which causes chronic progressive arthritis, pneumonia, and mastitis in adult goats and leukoencephalomyelitis in young kids [2,3]. Disease is widespread in populations of domestic sheep and goats throughout the world [4] and its high prevalence especially in industrialized countries (80-95% in the breeding stocks) is a major concern [5,6]. Ingestion of virus-infected colostrums or goat milk [7] is the main way of disease transmission and other routes such as direct contact, bodily secretions, and excretions [8,9] are less abundant. Prevalence of CAE around the world has passed over a wide range of variation among different countries, which may be as low as 1.9% in Turkey and 3.6% in Mexico, or even up to as high as 73% in USA and 82% in Australia [10]. Recent study from Iran showed that the 10.87 % of goats were serologically infected for CAEV [11] but unfortunately there is no previous data about the prevalence of this disease by molecular methods in Iran.