Evaluation of the effectiveness of semen processing techniques to remove bovine viral diarrhea virus from experimentally contaminated semen samples.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the capacity of three semen processing techniques, Percoll gradient centrifugation, Swim-up and a combination of Swim-up and Percoll gradient centrifugation, to reduce the viral load of bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) in experimentally infected semen samples. The evaluation was performed using two approaches: first, searching for the presence of virus in the processed samples (via virus titration and RT-PCR) and second, ascertaining the possible interference on in vitro embryo production. The sperm count and DNA integrity (Comet assay) of the processed samples were analyzed (Experiment 1).