Lastly, the use of social network and market chain analyses for future AI surveillance investigations is proposed like a basis for developing more effective AI control strategies. Acknowledgments This work was partly funded through the World Bank support for the Avian Influenza Control Project in Nigeria. LPAIV H3N8 and H5N2 in these turkeys is definitely of public health concern. We advocate further studies to determine the potential part of turkeys in the zoonotic transmission of AIVs in Nigeria. Additionally, the practice of rearing turkeys with chickens should be discouraged. 1. Intro Avian influenza (AI) is definitely a highly contagious disease caused by type A influenza viruses, a member of the family Orthomyxoviridae [1]. Influenza A viruses possess antigenically related nucleocapsid and matrix proteins but are classified into subtypes on the basis of their haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) antigens. Although Fouchier et al. [2] reported the presence of 16?H and 9?N subtypes of influenza A viruses, recent studies [3, 4] have identified additional H17N10 and H18N11 subtypes in bats. Many varieties of home and wild parrots worldwide have been shown to be susceptible to illness with avian influenza viruses (AIVs), with aquatic parrots constituting a major reservoir of these viruses which have particularly been reported to occur in poultry in either the highly pathogenic or low pathogenic forms; the overpowering majority of isolates are of low pathogenicity for chickens and turkeys [5, 6]. Specifically, turkeys are susceptible to a wide range of influenza A viruses and, as a major exception to the sponsor range restriction rule, are regularly infected with swine-like GNE-900 influenza viruses [7]. Infections in turkeys range from asymptomatic to severe disease including respiratory tract disease, major depression, drop in egg production, and high mortality [7, 8]. The segmented nature of the influenza disease genome allows for reassortment of genes when a vulnerable sponsor is definitely coinfected with different influenza disease subtypes [9], which may be from different varieties. This interspecies transmission of influenza viruses has been reported GNE-900 by several authors [9C12]. Influenza viruses with novel mixtures of gene segments from different influenza-susceptible varieties have been isolated from turkeys [12, 13], which have been indicated to be more susceptible to AI infections than chickens [14]. Although H3- and H5-subtype influenza viruses are known to infect avian and mammalian varieties, including humans [15, 16], the H3-subtype viruses are usually not the subject of standard monitoring, which is definitely biased towards detection of highly pathogenic avian strains, consequently leading to fewer H3 disease isolations from poultry flocks. Since 2005, AI offers spread from Southeast Asia to over 60 different countries, GNE-900 resulting in the direct death or slaughter of over 250 million poultry [17]. Recently, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) GNE-900 H5N2 that affected mostly turkey flocks was reported in several counties in Minnesota, Rabbit Polyclonal to DDX50 USA [18, 19]. In Nigeria which has a poultry industry of about 160 million parrots estimated at US$ 250 million [20], AI has been reported in several home and crazy parrots such as chickens [21], ducks [22], waterfowls [23], and spur-winged geese or whistling ducks [24]. Although these studies emphasize the importance of monitoring for AIV infections in the natural hosts, there has been little or no report of monitoring for the disease in turkeys, which form almost 2% of the total poultry human population, in Nigeria [25]. According to the OIE [6], in serologic monitoring programs, the test to detect the anti-nucleoprotein antibody is the method popular because it detects antibodies to a cross-reactive antigen shared by all influenza A viruses. Some authors [26, 27] have suggested that competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA) is effective for large-scale monitoring of AIV in avian flocks or herds of additional varieties and this test has been used to detect antibodies against GNE-900 different AIV strains, including H3N8 and H5N2, in chickens, ducks, turkeys, and additional avian varieties [27]. These authors reported that since the cELISA is definitely high in level of sensitivity but relatively low in specificity in turkeys, quails, and pheasants, its use for monitoring purposes should be accompanied by a conventional standard test (e.g., haemagglutination inhibition assay) when specific varieties need to be tested [27, 28]. Consequently, as part of on-going monitoring for AI in poultry, we carried out a serologic survey to investigate the prevalence of avian H3- and H5-subtype influenza disease antibodies in turkey flocks in three claims of southwest Nigeria. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1..