BACKGROUND Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is associated with enzootic bovine leukosis (EBL), which is the most common neoplastic disease of cattle. BLV infection may remain clinically silent at the aleukemic (AL) stage, cause persistent lymphocytosis (PL), or, more rarely, B cell lymphoma. BLV has been identified in B cells, CD2+ T cells, CD3+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, γ/δ T cells, mono...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV), a deltaretrovirus, causes B-cell leukemia/lymphoma in cattle and is prevalent in herds globally. A previous finding of antibodies against BLV in humans led us to examine the possibility of human infection with BLV. We focused on breast tissue because, in cattle, BLV DNA and protein have been found to be more abundant in mammary epithelium than in lymphocytes. In hum...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection of rabbits provides a safe and relatively inexpensive in vivo mammalian system for the study of the mechanisms controlling expression of a unique group of lymphotropic retroviruses. This group of viruses, which includes C-type human T-lymphotropic virus types I and II and lentiviruslike human immunodeficiency virus type 1, possesses genes coding for "trans-...

Bovine leukemia virus latency is a viral strategy used to escape from the host immune system and contribute to tumor development. However, a highly expressed BLV micro-RNA cluster has been reported, suggesting that the BLV silencing is not complete. Here, we demonstrate the in vivo recruitment of RNA polymerase III to the BLV miRNA cluster both in BLV-latently infected cell lines and in ovine B...

Horizontal transmission is recognized as a major infection route for bovine leukemia virus (BLV), and cattle with high viral loads are considered to be a major infectious source in a herd. However, a correlation between viral loads and the risk of infection has been insufficient to use as a foundation for BLV control strategies. In this report, we examined the epidemiology of BLV infection and ...

Short term cultures of bovine leukemic lymphocytes release virus particles with biochemical properties of RNA oncogenic viruses. These particles, tentatively called Bovine Leukemia Virus (BLV) have a high molecular weight-reverse transcriptase complex and a density averaging 1.155 g/ml in sucrose solutions. Molecular hybridizations between BLV-3H cDNA and several viral RNAs show that BLV is not...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection is characterized by viral latency in a large proportion of cells containing an integrated provirus. In this study, we postulated that mechanisms directing the recruitment of deacetylases to the BLV 5' long terminal repeat (LTR) could explain the transcriptional repression of viral expression in vivo. Accordingly, we showed that BLV promoter activity was ind...

Prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)), produced by macrophages, has important immune regulatory functions, suppressing a type 1 immune response and stimulating a type 2 immune response. Type 1 cytokines (interleukin-2 [IL-2], IL-12, and gamma interferon) increase in freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of animals with an early disease stage of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection,...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is an oncogenic deltaretrovirus that infects cattle worldwide. In Uruguay, it estimated more than 70% of dairy are infected, causing serious economic losses due to decreased milk production, increased calving interval, and livestock lymphosarcoma. Several attempts develop vaccine candidates activate protective immune responses against BLV were performed, but up date,...

Here, we used a sheep bioassay to determine the effect of freezing colostrum to prevent the transmission of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) among neonatal calves. Leukocytes were isolated from the colostrum of a BLV-infected Holstein cow and were then either left untreated (control) or freeze-thawed. A sheep inoculated intraperitoneally with the untreated leukocytes was infected with BLV at 3 weeks...