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At the Clinic for Ruminants in Ljubljana, an investigation of peritoneal fluid in cows that stretched over 30 years was conducted. A total of 779 cows were studied; 444 had hardware disease, 212 had left abomasal displacement, 98 cows had right abomasal displacement with or without abomasal torsion, and 25 cows had problems with the uterus. Abdominocentesis, macroscopic and microscopic examination of peritoneal fluid (physical appearance, differantion to transudate/exudates, cytological characteristics) offered valuable diagnostic information. On the basis of the results of 779 laboratory examinations, we have come to the conclusion that abdominal fluid is of significant diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic value for several acute and chronic abdominal diseases.

Small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) are spread throughout the world, including Slovenia, where the first evidence of caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) infection was found in 1996. This study was conducted to investigate the molecular and genetic characteristics of SRLV infection in Slovenia in order to classify our strains in relation to other known SRLV strains worldwide as well as to establish molecular techniques in concordance with serology. In this study, 340 goats and sheep were tested. Serological examination revealed that 57% of the goats and only 14% of the sheep were seropositive. The results of this study also show that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) used in this study is less reliable than ELISA, with only 60.6% of the seropositive animals being PCR positive. Thirty-eight nucleotide sequences of the gag region encoding the matrix protein were determined and compared to sequences derived from the GenBank, revealing that Slovenian SRLV strains belong to sequence groups A and B, being maedivisna virus (MVV) and CAEV-like, respectively. In one goat herd, the presence of more than one genotype was confirmed and the majority of goat SRLV sequences were more closely related to MVV than to CAEV prototype strains.