Fax +41 61 306 12 34 E-Mail karger@karger.ch www.karger.com Original Paper Intervirology 2012;55:194–200 DOI: 10.1159/000324023 Experimental Infection of Goats with Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus and the Possibilities to Prevent Virus Transmission by Raw Goat Milk Zsuzsanna Balogh a László Egyed b Emőke Ferenczi a Enikő Bán a Katalin N. Szomor a Mária Takács a György Berencsi a a National Center for Epidemiology, and b Veterinary Medical Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary goats. Immunized goats did not shed the virus. After heat treatment of the milk, the inoculated mice survived. Conclu- sions: Goats shed the virus with their milk without showing any symptoms. Human milk-borne infections can be avoid- ed both by immunizing goats and boiling/pasteurizing in- fected milk. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel Introduction Milk is often consumed raw among farm families be- cause of taste and convenience [1]. There is also a small portion of the general population which also drinks raw milk because it is believed to be able to prevent and treat certain diseases. Raw-milk advocates suggest that boiled milk has a lower biological value; however, most of the beneficial nutrients in milk are heat stable or largely un- affected by pasteurization [2]. On the other hand, raw milk and cheeses and other dairy products made of milk can be contaminated with pathogens including Mycobac- terium bovis, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Brucella, Liste- ria, Shigella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, Staphylococ- Key Words Tick-borne encephalitis virus  Goat  Milk  Immunization  Alimentary infection Abstract Objectives: The aim of this work was to study the tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) infection of goats and the possi- bilities to prevent human milk-borne infections either by im- munizing animals or the heat treatment of milk. Methods: An experiment was conducted with 20 milking goats. Ten goats (half of them immunized) were challenged with live TBEV and 10 were left uninfected. Clinical signs and body temperatures of the animals were recorded and milk sam- ples were collected daily. The presence of viral RNA and in- fectious virions in milk were detected by RT-PCR and intrace- rebral inoculation of suckling mice, respectively. Milk sam- ples containing infectious virions were subjected to various heat treatment conditions and retested afterwards to assess the effect on infectivity. Results: The infected goats did not show any clinical signs or fever compared to uninfected ones. Infectious virions were detected for 8–19 days from the milk samples (genome for 3–18 days by PCR) of infected Received: August 24, 2010 Accepted after revision: December 20, 2010 Published online: February 12, 2011 Mária Takács, PhD Division of Virology, National Center for Epidemiology Gyáli út 2–6 HU–1097 Budapest (Hungary) Tel. +36 1 476 1392, E-Mail takmar  @  gmail.com © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel 0300–5526/12/0553–0194$38.00/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/int