Molecular Detection and Phylogenetic Analysis of Canine Distemper Virus in Marsican Brown Bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus)

• Published in: Animals
• Main Authors: Di Francesco, Cristina Esmeralda, Smoglica, Camilla, Di Pirro, Vincenza, Cafini, Federica, Gentile, Leonardo, Marsilio, Fulvio
• Other Authors: Di Francesco CE, Smoglica C, Di Pirro V, Cafini F, Gentile L, Marsilio F.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: H gene; Marsican brown bear; canine distemper viru; phylogenetic analysi; wildlife lineage; Ursus arctos
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11575/124240; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12141826

Simple Summary Marsican brown bear is a subspecies of Eurasian bear, that lives in a few areas of Central Italy, with an estimated population of only 50 animals. For this reason, it is considered one of the most threatened Italian mammals, and specific Conservation Plans are applied with the focus to fight the mortality causes, mainly related to human activities or illegal practices. On the contrary, few reports describing infectious or parasitic diseases in Marsican brown bears are available. Among pathogens, the canine distemper virus (CDV) is responsible for a contagious and multi-organ disease, able to infect a wide range of domestic and wild carnivores. In 2013 a fatal outbreak of distemper was registered in Central Italy, involving dogs, Apennine wolves, badgers, and foxes, but apparently without any consequences for the Marsican brown bears living in the same territories. In this paper, we describe the first CDV infection detected in a live-trapped bear. The identified strain resulted in similarities to CDV recovered from foxes and dogs of the same area. Even if no clinical signs referred to the disease have been detected in the monitored bear, the evidence of a viral pathogen potentially able to menace the conservation of the Marsican brown bear population highlights the importance of continuing observation activities. In this paper, we report the first molecular detection of the canine distemper virus in the Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus). Three subadults and one adult were live-trapped and checked for the main viral pathogens responsible for infectious diseases in this species. The four bears were found to be negative for all investigated viruses except for one, which resulted in a positive outcome for CDV by means of RT-PCR targeting fragments of viral N and H genes. The sequence analysis revealed the specificity of amplicons for the Europe Wildlife lineage of CDV, the same viral strain recovered from three foxes and two unvaccinated dogs coming from the same territories where the ...