Abstract

Maedi-visna, a disease caused by small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLVs), is present in sheep from many countries, also including Germany. An amino acid substitution (E/K) at position 35 of the transmembrane protein 154 (TMEM154) as well as a deletion in the chemokine (C-C motif) receptor type 5 gene (CCR5) were reported to be associated with the serological MV status and/or the SRLV provirus concentration in North American sheep populations. The aim of this study was to test if those two gene variants might be useful markers for MV susceptibility in Germany. For this purpose, more than 500 sheep from 17 serologically MV positive German sheep flocks with different breed backgrounds were genotyped applying PCR-based methods. Both, crosstab and non-parametric analyses showed significant associations of the amino acid substitution at position 35 of TMEM154 with the serological MV status (cut-off-based classification) and the median MV ELISA S/P value in all samples and in two of the four analyzed breed subsets. The deletion in the CCR5 promoter did not show a consistent association with serological MV status or median ELISA S/P value. It can be concluded that the amino acid substitution at position 35 of TMEM154 is a promising marker for breeding towards a lower number of serologically MV positive sheep in German flocks, at least in flocks of the Texel breed, while this remains questionable for the deletion in the CCR5 promoter. The findings of this study still need to be verified in additional sheep breeds.

Highlights

  • Small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLVs) belong to the family Retroviridae and cause diseases called maedi-visna (MV) in sheep and caprine arthritis encephalitis (CAE) in goats

  • We report the results of the analysis of their association with the serological MV status and median MV enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) sample to positive control (S/P) value of more than 500 sheep from 17 MV positive German sheep flocks with different breed backgrounds

  • This study aimed at evaluating the association of sequence variants in two candidate genes for MV susceptibility (TMEM154 and chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5)) with serological MV infection status as well as with ELISA values (S/P ratio) in German sheep flocks

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Summary

Introduction

Small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLVs) belong to the family Retroviridae and cause diseases called maedi-visna (MV) in sheep and caprine arthritis encephalitis (CAE) in goats. Maedi-visna is widespread in sheep from many countries around the world. No European country except for Iceland can be considered to be free of SRLV infection [1]. The disease is substantially spread among sheep flocks in Germany [2]. There is no cure for the chronic disease caused by SRLVs, which includes symptoms such as pneumonia, wasting, mastitis, arthritis and progressive paralysis [3]. A vaccine preventing SRLV infection has not been developed yet [4]. Production losses stem from lamb mortality, lower lamb weights and milk

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