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The specialists of the Reference Laboratory for Avian Viral Diseases within the FGBI “Federal Centre for Animal Health” subordinate to the Rosselkhoznadzor developed and tested a technique for avian hepatitis E virus genome detection using real-time PCR. The commissioning test of the technique was successful.

Avian hepatitis E is a considerably wide-spread disease in Europe, Asia and USA and has been recently registered in Russia. The disease, also known as hepatitis-splenomegaly syndrome, causes drop in egg production and mortality increase. Methods based on real-time PCR used for rapid diagnostics of the disease are important for timely decision making on infection outbreak eradication.

For the purposes of the technique development the authors chose the quickest and most modern method, i.e. real-time PCR, which also enables to decrease the labour intensity and sample contamination and makes it suitable for rapid testing. The sensitivity shown for the developed technique (10 specific genome fragment molecules per reaction) is sufficient for testing of pathological material for virus genome RNA presence.

As a result of testing of pathological material samples from several Russian poultry farms using this technique avian hepatitis E virus isolates circulating in the RF were recovered.

FGBI “ARRIAH” Press Office