title: In search of virus carriers of the 1988 and 2002 phocine distemper virus outbreaks in European harbour seals.
abstract: European harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) populations decreased substantially during the phocine distemper virus (PDV) outbreaks of 1988 and 2002. Different hypotheses have stated that various seals and terrestrial carnivore species might be the source of infection. To further analyse these hypotheses, grey (Halichoerus grypus) and ringed (Phoca hispida) seals, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and minks (Mustela lutreola) were sampled from the North Sea and East Greenland coasts between 1988 and 2004 and investigated by RT-PCR using a panmorbillivirus primer pair. However, all samples were negative for morbillivirus nucleic acid.
authors: Department of Pathology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany.
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Kreutzer
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Kreutzer
authors: U
authors: U
authors: Siebert
authors: G
authors: G
authors: Müller
authors: P
authors: P
authors: Reijnders
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Brasseur
authors: T
authors: T
authors: Härkönen
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Dietz
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Sonne
authors: E W
authors: EW
authors: Born
authors: W
authors: W
authors: Baumgärtner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017931:DNA Primers; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000662:veterinary*; D004197:Disease Reservoirs / Q000662:veterinary; D004199:Disease Vectors; D004216:Distemper / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D018104:Distemper Virus, Phocine / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D018103:Morbillivirus / Q000145:classification / Q000472:pathogenicity; D046049:Phoca / Q000821:virology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers