ORAL AND GASTRIC PLAQUES, PAPILLOMAS, SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMAS AND PAPILLOMAVIRUSES IN SLENDER-HORNED GAZELLES...

The slender-horned gazelle (SHG, Gazella leptoceros) is a small, sand-colored antelope native to northern Africa. It is endangered due to poaching and habitat loss. Limited reports describe health or disease in wild or zoo populations. Mucosal plaques in the oral cavity (n = 2), papillomas in the rumen (n = 3) or reticulum (n = 1), and squamous cell carcinoma in the oral cavity (n = 3), rumen (n = 4), or reticulum (n=1) were seen independently or concurrently in eight of 74 SHG postmortem examinations in a zoological collection between 1983 and 2023. All tumors were diagnosed in adults. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for the papillomavirus (PV) L1 gene was positive in tumors from six of the eight SHG and negative in the same tissue types in SHG without tumors. Additional PCR testing and sequencing produced a 1041 bp contiguous consensus sequence of the papillomavirus L1 gene, and two complete PV genomes of 7354 and 7303 bp (51 bp deletion in the latter of one SHG tumor). BLASTN analysis of the L1 sequence (with highest query coverage, 96%) showed giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca PV1 as the closest match in GenBank (69.4% identity) to the SHG papillomavirus, which has been provisionally named Gazella leptoceros papillomavirus 1 (GlPV1); the variant with the deletion has provisionally been named GlPV1-variant (GlPV1-var). Bayesian (nucleotide) and neighbor joining (amino acid) phylogenetic analysis placed GlPV1 in a distinct clade with Ailuropoda melanoleuca PV1, Rickett's big-footed bat Myotis ricketti PV, and Polar bear Ursus maritimus PV. To the authors' knowledge, these are the first non-bovid papillomaviruses to be described in SHG. Our results contribute to a growing list of PVs that may play a role in the development of benign or malignant oral and gastric tumors, and disease processes to which SHGs are susceptible.