Sero-epidemiological study on equine influenza in Japan

A serological survey was conducted on horse sera collected for 7 years just before the first outbreak of equine influenza (EI) infection in Japan in 1971. No antibodies against the A/Equi-1/Prague/56 (equi-1) and A/Equi-2/Miami/63 (equi-2) strains of EI virus were detected in any of the sera of 452 native horses when employing hemagglutination inhibition (HI) and complement fixation (CF) tests against viral (V) antigen. On the contrary, of the 80 imported horses, 48 (60.0%) had HI titers of 1:8 or higher against equi-1 and 23 (28.8%) against equi-2. In the CF-V test 42.6% of the horses showed titers of 1:4 or higher against equi-1 antigen and 42.9% against equi-2 antigen. However, all the test sera of the native and imported horses were negative (less than 1:4) in CF tests against soluble human influenza antigen. Epidemiological analysis was carried out to clarify the relationship between the history and the presence of serum antibody against EI viruses in individual imported horses.