Epidemiological analysis of bovine ephemeral fever in 2012-2013 in the subtropical islands of Japan.

Background: Bovine ephemeral fever (BEF) is a febrile disease of cattle that is transmitted by arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes and Culicoides biting midges. An outbreak of BEF recently occurred in Ishigaki Island and surrounding islands that are located southwest of Japan. In this study, an epidemiological analysis was conducted to understand the temporal and spatial characteristics of the outbreak.

Occurrence of bovine ephemeral fever in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, in 2012 and development of a reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction assay to detect bovine ephemeral fever virus gene.

In September 2012, several cows and a calf showed decreased activity, anorexia and fever on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, and the cases were diagnosed as bovine ephemeral fever (BEF). We isolated BEF virus (BEFV) from one of the affected cows and then determined the complete genome sequence of the G gene, which encodes a class I transmembrane glycoprotein of BEFV. The BEFV isolate in this case, ON-3/E/12, was sorted into the same cluster as other BEFV isolates in Japan, Taiwan and China obtained in 1996-2004 and was most closely related to a 2002 Chinese isolate, JT02L, according to the phylogenetic analysis of the complete G gene.

CD56 is expressed exclusively on CD3+ T lymphocytes in canine peripheral blood.

CD56+ cells in canine blood leukocytes were characterized by flow-cytometric analysis of peripheral blood of 30 healthy adult beagle-dogs (15 males and 15 non-pregnant females). In 19 of the 30 dogs, anti human CD56 antibody, Leu-19, reacted with 8.8-21.