Acta Veterinaria Hungarica 61 (2), pp. 270–280 (2013) DOI: 10.1556/AVet.2013.007 First published online 6 February 2013 0236-6290/$ 20.00 © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest ISOLATION AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERISATION OF A PESTIVIRUS FROM GOATS IN EGYPT Ahmed O. ABDEL-LATIF 1,2 , Sagar M. GOYAL 1* , Yogesh CHANDER 1 , Ahmed S. ABDEL-MONEIM 2,3 , Sabry M. TAMAM 2 and Hanafy M. MADBOULY 2 1 Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 55108, USA; 2 Department of Virology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt; 3 Division of Virology, Department of Microbiology, College of Medicine, Taif University, Al-Taif, Saudi Arabia (Received 21 December 2011; accepted 4 June 2012) Nine fetuses and neonates from sheep and goats in Egypt were screened for pestiviruses using immunohistochemistry (IHC), virus isolation, and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Two goat kids with typical border disease (BD) were positive for pestivirus infection by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using polyclonal anti-BDV serum but not when four different monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were used. On inoculation in MDBK cells, a cytopathic bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) was isolated from one of the two kids. PCR ampli- fication followed by sequencing of the 5′-UTR region confirmed it as BVDV sub- type 1b. Although the circulating virus in Egypt is considered to be BVDV 1a, this report confirms the existence of BVDV 1b in addition to BVDV 1a. To our knowledge, this is the first report of isolation of a pestivirus from goats in Egypt and is probably the second report worldwide of a goat kid showing central nerv- ous signs associated with border disease. Key words: Bovine viral diarrhoea virus, goats, border disease Pestiviruses are important animal pathogens and cause significant eco- nomic losses to the livestock industry worldwide (Paton et al., 1995; Sullivan et al., 1997). The genus Pestivirus in the family Flaviviridae currently contains four established species: bovine viral diarrhoea virus type 1 (BVDV-1), bovine viral diarrhoea virus type 2 (BVDV-2), border disease virus (BDV), and classical swine fever virus (CSFV) (Thiel et al., 2005). Historically, pestiviruses were named according to the species from which they were isolated: CSFV in pig, BVDV in cattle, and BDV in sheep. However, it is now known that sheep and goats can be infected not only with BDV but also with BVDV-1 and BVDV-2 (Marco et al., 2008; Mishra et al., 2008). In fact, transmission of BVDV and * Corresponding author; E-mail: goyal001@umn.edu; Phone: 001 (612) 625-2714; Fax: 001 (612) 624-8707