Transmission of equine infectious anemia virus from horses without clinical signs of disease.

Twenty seven adult horses positive to the agar gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test for equine infectious anemia (EIA), but with no history of clinical EIA, were used in transfusion studies to determine whether infectious EIA virus was present in 1 to 5 ml of their blood. Of 27 recipients, 21 (78%) became AGID test-positive at an average of 24 days after inoculation. Two horses that were initially negative when screened were retested and found to carry infectious virus in 5-300 ml of whole blood; the other 4 horses were not retested. Horse flies (Tabanus fuscicostatus Hine) were unable to transmit EIA virus from 10 AGID test-positive donors with no history of clinical EIA, but virus was transmitted from a pony with artificially induced acute EIA and from a horse that had recovered from a clinical attack of EIA 9 months earlier. Histopathologic changes indicative of EIA were noted in all test-positive recipients. The most consistent lesion was paracortical lymphoid hyperplasia in the splenic lymph node.