TDK conference 2019

The EEHV( elephant endotheliothropic herpesvirus) is a herpesvirus in the newly described Proboscivirus genus within the Betaherpesvirinae subfamily that infects wild and captive elephants as well. Despite of its worldwide of distribution, in wild animals it usually causes an asymptomatic infection, while mainly in captive asian elephants it can cause a very serious disease. The clinical course of the disease is very rapid with severe endothelial cell damage in the blood vessels leading to hemorrhages in various organs. There are still gaps in the knowledge about the transmission and the pathogenesis in the scientific literature. The isolation, and passage of the virus on cell cultures are not successful yet, thus there are no vaccines available. In the Department of Pathology we developed an RNA based in situ hybridization method for the detection of the viral genome. With this method we could successfully identify the pathogen in formalin fixated and paraffin embedded organ samples obtained from a 6 years old Asian elephant calf that was born in the Budapest Zoo and died last year. The strongest positivity was found in the heart muscle and in the liver, while less positive cells were identified in the spleen and in the lymph node. The paralely performed qPCR tests showed similar results regarding the virus levels in the different organs.