[Characteristics of paramyxoviruses isolated from pigeons in Czechoslovakia]

Nine strains of paramyxovirus isolated from racing pigeons in southern Bohemia, Moravia and western Slovakia in 1983 were identified by the haemagglutination-inhibition test with antisera to seven types of paramyxovirus and three types of influenza A virus as PMV-1, Newcastle disease virus, in all cases. The haemagglutination activity and pathogenicity of the isolates for chicken embryos, chicken fibroblast cultures, and chickens of different age were determined. The mean death time of chicken embryos (MDT/MLD) was 52.8 to 95.4 h, the average being 75.7 h. The intracerebral pathogenicity index (ICPI8) was on an average 1.42 +/- 0.10 (P = 0.95). Experimental infection of chickens at the age of one, two, three and eight weeks did not cause any clinical disease but increased the level of haemagglutination-inhibiting (HI) serum antibodies up to 1 : 256 within three weeks. The course of heat inactivation of pigeon viruses at the temperature of 56 degrees C was practically identical with the inactivation of the velogenic viscerotropic strain California/1082/71. On the basis of the results, the pigeon isolates may be considered the Newcastle disease virus of velogenic viscerotropic type whose pathogenicity for chickens has been reduced to the level of mesogenic strains by long-time passaging in pigeons.