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Case Reports
. 2020 Jun 24;82(6):817-822.
doi: 10.1292/jvms.19-0406. Epub 2020 May 1.

Avipoxvirus infection in two captive Japanese cormorants (Phalacrocorax capillatus)

Takumi Kurihara  1 , Akihiro Hirata  1   2 , Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi  3 , Harue Okada  3 , Miho Kameda  3 , Hiroki Sakai  1 , Mohie Haridy  4 , Tokuma Yanai  1   5
Affiliations
Case Reports

Avipoxvirus infection in two captive Japanese cormorants (Phalacrocorax capillatus)

Takumi Kurihara et al. J Vet Med Sci. .

Abstract

Cormorant fishing is a traditional Japanese fishing method using captive Japanese cormorants (Phalacrocorax capillatus). Between June and July 2017, an avian pox outbreak was reported in captive cormorant populations throughout several distant cities in Japan. We examined the lesions obtained from two such affected cormorants, which were raised in distant cities. The affected cormorants were grossly characterized by the development of cutaneous nodules around the base of the beak. Histopathologically, these nodules consisted of marked epidermal hyperplasia with ballooning degeneration of spinous cells and eosinophilic intracytoplasmic inclusions (Bollinger bodies). The lesions displayed 4b core protein (P4b) of Avipoxvirus (APV) and DNA polymerase genes, which were detected by PCR. Moreover, the nucleotide sequences detected from both cormorants were found to be identical. No identical sequence was found in any international database. These findings suggest that both examined cormorants were infected with an identical APV, which has never been previously reported. According to the phylogenetic analysis, the detected sequences were observed to cluster in subclade A3, which consists mainly of the sequences detected from several marine birds, including other cormorant species. This observation suggests that the viruses might be maintained in Japanese cormorants in nature.

Keywords: Japanese cormorant; avian pox; avipoxvirus; pathology; phylogenetic analysis.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Gross appearance of coalescent nodules around the base of the upper beak of a Japanese cormorant (Case No. 1).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Histopathology of the cutaneous nodules of Case No. 1. hematoxylin and eosin staining. (A) Low-magnification. Bar=1 mm. (B) Higher magnification of (A). Bar=100 µm.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree based on concatenated DNA sequences encoding 4b core protein and DNA polymerase of avipoxviruses (APVs). APV clades A to C and subclades are labeled according to the nomenclature of Gyuranecz et al. [3]. The sequences obtained from Japanese cormorants in this study are indicated in italicized underlined bold face. Both sequences are clustered in subclade A3, which represents APVs of marine birds [3]. All other sequences are indicated as accession number/host species/country/year/clade and subclade number. The bootstrap probabilities, as determined for 1,000 resampling, larger than 900 are given.
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