Sero-epizootiological survey on Getah virus infection in light horses in Japan.

Abstract

A serological survey was conducted to know the prevalence of Getah virus (GV) among horses in some areas, including one where GV infection had occurred, in Japan. In the Miho Training Center (T.C.) for horses, where an outbreak of GV infection had occurred among racehorses in autumn of 1978, serum neutralizing (SN) antibody against GV was detected in 6.0% of 232 horses before this outbreak, and in 93.0% of 129 infected horses and in 34.2% of 152 uninfected horses after this outbreak. In a serological survey in 1978, SN antibody against GV was detected from every area surveyed, but it was only in the Kyushu area that the antibody was detected in 1-year-old horses. When serum samples were collected annually from 200 horses in the Shiroi Branch of the Nakayama Racecourse during a period from 1972 to 1977, SN antibody against GV was detected in some of them every year. From these results, it was suggested that the symptoms of the affected horses in the Miho T.C. might have been caused by GV, and further that GV infection might have bcen spread among horses in Japan before the epizootic in 1978.