Three strains of chicken anemia virus (CAV) were detected in 11 to 14-weeks old chickens, showing depression, wasting, and increased mortality, from three farms in eastern Japan. Another strain was detected in 12-weeks old chickens from one farm without clinical signs. Bacterial infections were suggested in three farms with clinical signs and its involvement in the occurrence of the diseases might be suspected. Sequence analysis of the VP1, VP2, and VP3 genes of four CAV strains revealed that the three from farms with clinical signs belonged to genotype A2, whereas that from the apparentlynormal farm belonged to A3. This may be a rare case report about the diseases suspected of the involvement of the CAV infection in older birds. Key words: chicken anemia virus, east Japan, gangrenous dermatitis, phylogenetic tree, replacement pullet Chicken anemia virus (CAV) was first isolated in Japan by Yuasa et al. [17]. The virus belongs to the genus Gyrovirus under the family Anneloviridae [12]. The virion is small [7], non-enveloped and contains a single-stranded negative sense DNA genome [2, 11]. This virus is considered to be a ubiquitous poultry pathogen present worldwide [9]. Generally, it is understood that this virus affects mainly young birds up to 3-weeks old [9]. Affected birds which have no maternal antibodies show syndrome with anemia, anorexia, depression, immunosuppression, and increased mortality. This can lead to complications because of opportunistic infections [10, 11]. When birds older than 3 weeks are infected, the infection is usually subclinical [8, 11], however, clinical disease in birds older than 3 weeks has been reported in Israel [3], and Bulgaria [14]. These clinical cases might have occurred in Japanese pullets also. However, these cases may have been misdiagnosed or unrecognized as CAV infections. The diagnosis might have leaned towards other diseases which show similar symptom/syndrome, such as infectious bursal disease (IBD) [1]. This study was conducted to confirm CAV infections in late stage of replacement pullet flocks from eastern Japan. The four strains, described in this report, were classified and compared with local and foreign CAV strains by genetic analysis. The target for this study was four pullet-farms in eastern Japan. Two of them were located in Fukushima prefecture, one in Ibaraki prefecture and one other farm was in Chiba prefecture (Table 1). Farms A, B, and D had multiple houses and each house contained one or more flocks. Farm C had one flock in one house. The parent-flocks of farms A, B, and C came from the same line of White Leghorn from the same hatchery, and different parent stock. Sampled birds from farm D were brown layers, these came from a hatchery different from farms A, B, and C. The farms employed standard management and rearing procedures. Vaccinations included Marek's disease virus