Diagnosis of contagious ecthyma in goats in a quarantine station in Panama

Abstract

We report an outbreak of contagious ecthyma (CE) in a herd of goats at Paso Canoas quarantine station, Panama. The goats were adult intact females. Visible clinical signs became apparent from day 13 after the start of quarantine. We performed clinical examination. Serum biopsy and scabs were collected from crusted lesions in the epithelium of the lips, nose and eyelid corners. Samples were studied by histopathology,complement fixation test, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), DAS-ELISA, viral isolationand nucleic acid amplification tests. Histopathology revealed ortho and parakeratotic hyperkeratosis, epithelial hyperplasia, viral inclusion bodies, keratinocytes with balonoid degeneration, vesicles with neutrophils and degenerated cells, in superficial dermis there is marked neovascularization. Complement fixation test, DAS-ELISA and nucleic acid amplification tests resulted positive for contagious ecthyma. TEM showed viral particles, consistent with Parapoxvirus. Clinical and laboratory findings were consistent with poxvirus infection in the quarantine goat herd

Severe Persistent Case of Contagious Ecthyma (Orf) in Goats

“…The diagnosis of contagious ecthyma can be on the basis of examining the clinical signs and characteristic of the lesions, histopathology, and observation of a poxvirus particles by electron microscopy (Nandi et al, 2011). On the other hand, serological tests such as agar gel precipitation test (AGPT), agglutination test, complement fixation test (CFT), enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), serum neutralization test (SNT) could be employed (Hosamani et al, 2009;Magaña Ch et al, 2014). Abdullah et al (2015) reported that molecular detection of Orf virus using specific primers targeting genes such as B2L and F1L genes could be as confirmatory diagnosis.…”