The isolation and characterisation of astroviruses from chickens.

The isolation, cultivation and characterization of three chicken astroviruses (CAstV) isolates are described. They are antigenically related to each other but unrelated to avian nephritis virus (ANV) and duck hepatitis virus type 2 (DVH2) in neutralization, immunofluorescence and gel diffusion tests. CAstV, ANV and DVH2 all grew well in the LMH cell line, which was used for assay and serological tests.