Epidemiological Study of Lumpy Skin Disease Outbreaks in North-western Iran

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a highly contagious transboundary disease of cattle with major economic losses. This study was undertaken to address the emergence and epidemiological features of LSD in four north-western provinces of Iran. These provinces have extensive borders with others country including Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia. A population of 683 cattle from 91 farms were examined during LSD outbreak in Iran during 2014-2016. The information of the farms including the population size, gender, age, vaccination status, clinical signs and the number of death because of LSD were recorded in the designed questionnaires. A number of 234 blood samples were collected randomly from animals with and without clinical signs of LSD. DNA was extracted from blood samples, and they were used for amplifying a fragment of 434 bp in size coupled with restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) for molecular detection of lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV). The estimated prevalence, cumulative mortality and case fatality were 17.9%, 3.5% and 19.7%, respectively. There was no significant difference in occurrence of the disease between male and female cattle. LSD occurrence in age groups above 5 years old and below 6 months old showed highest and lowest relative frequencies, respectively. Vaccination was significantly decreased the occurrence of clinical disease. The developed PCR-RFLP technique was able to differentiate between LSDV, sheep pox virus (ShPV) and goat pox virus (GPV). It was concluded that LSD was entered into Iran probably from Iraq via uncontrolled animal movements along common land borders between two countries. Developed PCR-RFLP could be used as a rapid and inexpensive method for differentiating Capripoxviruses (CaPVs).