Isolation of bovine adenovirus type 1 from a calf with pneumo-enteritis.

During the last decade, an increasing number of bovine adenoviruses have been isolated from calves suffering from more, or less, well-defined syndromes. These have consisted of respiratory disorders of varying severity, enteritis, or a combination of both, which in typical cases has been termed “pneumo-enteritis”. These investigations have been reviewed by (1968). (1969) isolated adenoviruses from kerato-conjunctivitis (KC) in cattle. Furthermore, strains have been isolated from apparently healthy animals ( 1968), and from tissue cultures prepared from various organs from calves such as kidneys ( 1968), and testes ( 1968, 1969). At the present time 9 serotypes of bovine adenoviruses exist, as determined by neutralization tests, and these have recently been reviewed by (1970). However, several strains, some from cases of pneumonia ( 1970, 1970) and others from KC ( 1969) remain to be typed and compared with the known prototypes, thereby enabling possible new serotypes to be identified. So far, serotypes 1 and 2 ( 1969), serotype 3 ( 1966) and serotypes 4 and 5 ( 1965) have been shown to cause pneumo-enteritis, and serotype 6 ( 1970) a mild respiratory disease in experimentally infected calves. Similarly, KC has been produced experimentally by (1970), while the pathogenicity for experimental animals of the other typed and untyped strains remains to be investigated.