Objective To determine a previously unknown pathogen that caused an outbreak of highly lethal disease in a geese farm.
Method In August 2019, a disease characterized by gout broke out in a goose farm in Nanping City, Fujian Province. Three clinical samples from the diseased geese, which showed symptoms of the infectious disease characterized by gout with an incidence rate as high as 40% that resulted in a mortality rate of 80% on 5- to 20-d-old geese, were collected and tested in laboratory for pathogen identification.
Result The PCR results confirmed the existence of novel goose astrovirus in all three samples, but no bacteria were isolated from medium culture. Inoculating the virus into the 11-d-old goose embryos did not induce death but showed dotted hemorrhage on the body skin and hemorrhage on the kidneys and lungs. The allantoic fluid and tissue specimens collected for PCR were tested positive as novel goose astrovirus, not other viruses commonly known to infect geese. The isolated virus was named FJ-NP, and its partial ORF2 genes showed a close relationship with the strains found in Anhui (i.e., GD AHAU2, AHAU3, and AHAU5), in Heilongjiang (i.e., AstV-Goose-2018-HLJ01) and in Henan (i.e., AstV-HN02-Goose-1119-18, AstV-AH02-Goose-0715-18, AstV-HB02-Goose-0310-19, and AstV-HN03-Goose-0402-19) but far from the Hubei, Beijing or Fujian strains.
Conclusion This study successfully isolated a strain of novel goose astrovirus, and performed a genetic evolution analysis on its partial ORF2 genes, which provided material for further research on novel goose astrovirus in Fujian Province.
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