Investigation of equine herpesvirus-1 and 4 infections in equine population of iran by real-time PCR

Objective: To detect the presence or absence of EHV-1 and EHV-4 in North-East equine population of Iran. Material and methods: Blood samples of 200 adult horses located in 80 different rural areas of North-East of Iran, were examined for Equine herpesvirus-1 and 4 presences. Absolute quantitation of EHV-4 target molecules was performed using standard curves and thedetection limit of the assay was shown to be six copies per reaction. Results: Our study showed a high prevalence of EHV-4 (88%) in these regions. EHV-1 DNA was not detected in any sample.Conclusion: In addition to previous serological study, our report is the first to detect the EHVs in blood samples of Iran's equine population by using a high sensitive real-time PCR diagnostic assay and it provides new information for the virus distribution map