The lumpy skin disease (LSD) virus that has killed at least 50,000 cattle in India this year may be structurally different from the version of the virus prevalent in India in 2019, raising questions on whether the new vaccine being developed for safeguarding cattle may be adequately protective.
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Scientists at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) and the State Disease Diagnostic Centre, Jaipur, analysed five animals with symptoms of the disease and compared genomes of the virus extracted from them.
Six genomes (there were multiple genomes from a single animal) showed that it had “little similarity to global genomes” when compared with genetic sequences from earlier outbreaks of the disease.
The analysis of the genomes revealed 177 unique variants, none of which were found in four genome sequences from India belonging to the 2019 outbreak of the disease deposited in GenBank, a popular database.
This is significant as Lumpi-ProVacInd, a vaccine developed by the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) National Research Centre on Equines is based on LSD virus samples from cattle in Ranchi afflicted in the 2019 outbreak.
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