title: Detection of West Nile virus in oral and cloacal swabs collected from bird carcasses.
abstract: We evaluated if postmortem cloacal and oral swabs could replace brain tissue as a specimen for West Nile virus (WNV) detection. WNV was detected in all three specimen types from 20 dead crows and jays with an average of >10(5) WNV PFU in each. These findings suggest that testing cloacal or oral swabs might be a low-resource approach to detect WNV in dead birds.
authors.affiliation: Arbovirus Diseases Branch, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colorado 80522, USA. nck6@cdc.gov
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Komar
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lanciotti
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bowen
authors.forename: Stanley
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Langevin
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bunning
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001715:Bird Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000821:virology*; D001717:Birds / Q000821:virology*; D002988:Cloaca / Q000821:virology*; D009055:Mouth / Q000821:virology*; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000302:isolation & purification; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D014901:West Nile Fever / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000662:veterinary / Q000821:virology*; D014902:West Nile virus / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*
chemical_list: D012367:RNA, Viral