Transmission Dynamics of Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus in Hokkaido, Japan by Phylogenetic and Epidemiological Network Approaches

Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) caused by BVD virus (BVDV) leads to economic loss worldwide. Cattle that are persistently infected (PI) with BVDV are known to play an important role in viral transmission in association with the animal movement, as they shed the virus during their lifetime. In this research, the “hot spot” for BVD transmission was estimated by combining phylogenetic and epidemiological analyses for PI cattle and cattle that lived together on BVDV affected farms in Tokachi district, Hokkaido prefecture, Japan. Viral isolates were genetically categorized into BVDV-1a, 1b, and 2a, based on the nucleotide sequence of the entire E2 region. In BVDV genotype 1, subgenotype b (BVDV-1b), cluster I was identified as the majority in Tokachi district. Network analysis indicated that 12 of the 15 affected farms had cattle movements from other facilities (PI-network) and farms affected with BVDV-1b cluster I consisted of a large network. It was implied that the number of cattle movements themselves would be a risk of BVD transmission, using the PageRank algorithm. Therefore, these results demonstrate that cattle movements would contribute to disease spread and the combination of virological and epidemiological analysis methods would be beneficial in determining possible virus transmission routes.