A Survey on Avian Influenza Virus H9N2 Shedding After Experimental Inoculation of Chukar Partridges (Alectoris Chukar)

Objectives: Chukar partridges are important for being target of the virus besides being its carrier at the same time. So knowing that how long the partridge can carry the flu virus in the environment and wilderness is highly important. There is little information on quarantining the flu infected partridge, and it becomes a source of astonishment for those involved. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the shedding of H9N2 flu virus in the breeding partridge by RT-PCR.Materials and Methods: 500 hundred day-old partridges which were subdivided into 10 groups of 50 kept in same condition up to two months, each group was treated orally and ocularly with 0.1 ml of live with EID50 10^9.5. Sampling of tracheal and cloacal swabs was carried out 24 hours up to 30 days after inoculation. Swab samples were freezed at -70oC. Samples treated and injected to the 10-day embryonated egg. Subsequently, HA test on the amino-allantoic fluid showed cultivation of virus. Due to the need to confirm the shedding of the flu virus from partridges subsequently to infection, the sample cultured in the eggs was gone through RNA and then RT-PCR isolation test. Results and Discussion: The results indicate that shedding of the virus in the partridge in the trachea region is higher than cloac. The more we depart from the concentration 100 towards 10^-8 , the fewer becomes the number of positive samples as well as the number of days in which we observed virus shedding, that is to say, the higher the concentration of the virus, the more shedding of the virus by the partridge will become. The results for PT-PCR also indicated that 100 all of the positive samples collected from the partridges are H9N2 that match with the initially infected samples of the herd.