Genetic Analysis of Two Chicken Infectious Anemia Virus Variants-Related Gyrovirus in Stray Mice and Dogs: The First Report in China, 2015

Chicken infectious anemia virus (CIAV) causes acute viral infection in chickens worldwide. It can infect chickens of all ages, but the disease is seen only in young chickens and is characterized by hemorrhagic lesions in the muscles, atrophic changes in the lymphoid organs, aplastic bone marrow, and immunosuppression causing increased mortality. Previous studies have demonstrated that CIAV can be isolated from blood specimens of humans and fecal samples of stray cats. In the present study, two variants of CIAV were isolated from fecal samples of mice (CIAV-Mouse) and stray dogs (CIAV-Dog), respectively. The genome of the two CIAV variants was sequenced and the results of the recombination detection program suggested that the CIAV-Dog strain could be a recombinant viral strain generated from parental CIAV strains, AB119448 and GD-1-12, with high confidence. Particularly, these findings were obtained from the comparison of genetic diversity and the relationship of CIAV between different hosts. This is the first report indicating that there is a significant difference in the number of transcription factor binding sites in CIAV noncoding regions from different hosts. Further studies are required to investigate the large geographic distribution of CIAV and monitor the variants, host range, and associated diseases.