In many of the parts of the world where thalassaemia is common, the blood supply is inadequate or unsafe, and desferrioxamine is too expensive for routine use. We classify some patients as having 'severe thalassaemia intermedia', i.e. those with moderately severe thalassaemia who can survive without regular transfusions, but who are at risk of many complications which are reviewed here. These include bone deformity and fractures, extramedullary haemopoietic tumours, leg ulcers, autoimmune haemolysis and, especially after splenectomy, thromboembolism and infection. An increase in the quality and safety of the blood supply, and a cheaper and/or oral iron chelator, would enable more of these patients to be treated as thalassaemia major and have improved survival and quality of life.
Chicken anemia virus (CAV) is the causative agent of chicken infectious anemia (CIA). Study on the type of CAV isolates present and their genetic diversity, transmission to their progeny and level of protection afforded in the breeder farms is lacking in Malaysia. Hence, the present study was aimed to detect CAV from commercial broiler breeder farms and characterize CAV positive samples based on sequence and phylogenetic analysis of partial VP1 gene.
A study was conducted to isolate and identify chicken anaemia virus (CAV) from field samples of clinically infected broiler chickens in Malaysia. A total of 125 samples were collected from chickens aged 2-6 weeks with clinically depressed and retarded growth, of which five samples were found positive to CAV directly by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Later, five isolates of CAV from the respective five PCR positive samples were isolated in MDCC-MSB1 cells at passage 4 based on cytopathic effects, PCR and indirect immunofluorescent antibody test. The isolates were identified as BL-1, BL-2, BL-3, BL-4 and BL-5. These CAV isolates were found to resist treatment with chloroform and heat at 37 degrees C for 2 h, 56 degrees C for 30 min and 70 degrees C for 5 min. One of the isolates, BL-5 produced significant reduction (p < 0.001) of hematocrit values (9-19%), pale bone marrow, thymus atrophy and haemorrhages in skin/muscle when inoculated into 1-day old SPF chickens. Restriction enzyme digestion of 926 bp genomic fragments of all the isolates including Cux-1 isolate with HindIII exhibited a similar pattern of bands in 2% agarose gel. The present findings confirmed the presence of CAV in Malaysia.