Abstract
Widespread deaths of American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos)were associated with the 1999 outbreak of West Nile (WN) virus in the New York City region. We compared six organs from 20 crow carcasses as targets for WN virus detection. Half the carcasses had at least one positive test result for WN virus infection. The brain was the most sensitive test organ; it was the only positive organ for three of the positive crows. The sensitivity of crow organs as targets for WN virus detection makes crow death useful for WN virus surveillance.
Highlights
September and October 1999, we removed sections of brain, liver, spleen, kidney, heart, and lung for West Nile (WN) virus detection by plaque assay and TaqMan reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) (3)
A 5-μL aliquot from each sample was tested by TaqMan RT-PCR assay, which quantitates WN virus RNA
WN virus was most often isolated from brain (8 [80%] of 10) and heart (6 [67%] of 9), while WN virus RNA was most frequently detected in brain (10 [100%] of 10) and liver and kidney
Summary
Comparative West Nile Virus Detection in Organs of Naturally Infected American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos). The 1999 outbreak of West Nile (WN) virus in the New York City area (1) was associated with the deaths of thousands of American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), which appeared to be highly susceptible to the virus. We compared the sensitivity of the brain with that of other crow organs as targets for WN virus detection by both virus isolation and RNA detection. Sensitivity of each assay for detecting WN virus or RNA in each organ was determined by using only the WN virus-infected carcasses as denominator in the calculations. Tissues from the three crows for which only brain provided positive RNA detection were confirmed positive by repeat-testing in triplicate with three different TaqMan RT-PCR primer pairs. WN virus was isolated by plaque assay from approximately 1 g of brain tissue from one of these specimens (NJN-37, data not shown)
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