Dynamics of Marek’s disease in poultry industry

Abstract

Marek's Disease (MD) is a highly contagious disease of poultry birds and readily spread from one bird to another. The MD Virus (MDV) has the tendency to survive in the litter for long periods of time and yet retaining its pathogenicity, thus creating outbreak at any point of time and causing huge losses to the poultry farmers. This property of MDV makes it utmost important to understand the disease dynamics of MD in the form of its epidemiology information allied to prevalence, outbreaks, morbidity, mortality and surveillance. Commercial poultry farming is totally based on the economic considerations and hence the mortality leads to huge economic losses, thus studying economic impact is also concerned with the dynamics of disease. The dynamism in serotypes of the virus makes the vaccines ineffective and leads to the frequent outbreak of disease. Therefore, the biological and molecular identification of the changing serotypes may lead to the effective control of the disease which will lead to economic stability among poultry farmers.

A Review on the Marek’s Disease Outbreak and Its Virulence-Related meq Genovariation in Asia between 2011 and 2021

“…MD was first reported in a chicken farm in Hungary in 1907 and rapidly spread around the world, with recorded mortalities ranging from 10 to 30% and occasionally above 60% in infected chickens. MD causes an economic loss of approximately USD 1 billion every year [ 1 ], despite efforts made in constructing vaccines and clinical monitoring [ 2 , 3 ]. The monitoring of MD in farms relies first on clinical pathology detection and is followed by genetic confirmation.…”

Molecular characterization of Marek's Disease virus reveals reticuloendotheliosis virus-long terminal repeat integration in the genome of the field isolates in Egypt

“…The most prevalent clinical sign in the classical MD with one or more enlarged peripheral nerves is partial or total paralysis of the legs and wings. Solid tumors originating from transformed T-lymphocytes in the liver, spleen, gonads, lungs, kidneys, proventriculus, and heart are the typical finding in acute MD ( Chauhan et al, 2021 ; WOAH, 2023 ). The first case of MD was reported in Egypt in 1954 ( Soliman et al, 1954 ), and several studies, including pathological, virological, and/or seroepidemiological studies, have been published ( Sheble et al, 1973 ; El-Sawy et al, 1992 ; Amin et al, 2001 ; Awad, 2002 ; Hussein et al, 2004 ; Hassanin et al, 2013 ; Lebdah et al, 2017 ; El-Kenawy et al, 2019 ; Ewies et al, 2021 ).…”

Economic and value chain analysis to support an investigation and risk mitigation efforts on Marek's disease in layers in the southern part of Thailand

“…The economic burden of MD is attributed to additional morbidity and mortality in broilers or laying birds, degradation of the bird’s value, egg production loss, culling of diseased birds, and costs of additional disease prevention and control measures, including vaccines [ 13 , 14 ].…”