Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) has spread worldwide and causes serious problems in the cattle industry owing to lack of effective treatments vaccines. BLV is transmitted via horizontal vertical infection, with high proviral load (PVL), which a useful index for estimating disease progression transmission risk, are considered major infectious sources within herds. PVL strongly correlates highly poly...

Background: Bovine leukaemia virus (BLV) is the primary cause of enzootic bovine leukaemia which belongs to the HTLV/BLV group of oncogenic retroviruses including Human T-cell leukaemia virus types 1, 2, and 3 and simian T-lymphotropic virus. Due to daily consumption of milk, meat and other dairy by-products, a possible role in appearing human cancers can be assumed for BLV. Materials and Metho...

Retroviruses are not expected to encode miRNAs because of the potential problem of self-cleavage of their genomic RNAs. This assumption has recently been challenged by experiments showing that bovine leukemia virus (BLV) encodes miRNAs from intragenomic Pol III promoters. The BLV miRNAs are abundantly expressed in B-cell tumors in the absence of significant levels of genomic and subgenomic vira...

We examined whether Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) was transmitted by rectal palpation using a common sleeve between a BLV-infected cow and BLV-negative steers. Three of four steers developed antibodies against BLV as determined by agar-gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test between 7 to 10 weeks after the first rectal palpation using common sleeves from BLV-infected cow. In the steers, BLV proviral DNA ...

Healthy ruminants carry intestinal Shiga toxin (Stx)-producing Escherichia coli (STEC). Stx has antiviral activities in vitro and STEC numbers correlate with reduced early viremia in sheep experimentally infected with bovine leukemia virus (BLV). This study assessed the impact of intestinal STEC on BLV-induced disease for one year post-BLV-challenge. High STEC scores (CFU/g feces x frequency of...

Various techniques for screening and detection of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) were compared to ascertain a rapid and simple technique for routine examination. The performance of real-time PCR, nested PCR and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays was compared using DNA extracted from whole blood instead of white blood cells (WBCs) of 23 cattle. Real-time PCR, LAMP and nested PCR d...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is the causative agent of enzootic bovine leukosis. This study was conducted to clarify the molecular characteristics of BLVs obtained from a specific region in Korea. Proviral BLVs were detected in anti-BLV antibody-positive blood samples by PCR. Env and gag fragments were sequenced and compared to previously published reference sequences. Analysis of the env gene s...

The bovine MHC (BoLA) class II DRB3 alleles are associated with polyclonal expansion of lymphocytes caused by bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection in cattle. To examine whether the DRB3*0902 allele, one of the resistance-associated alleles, is associated with the proviral load, we measured BLV proviral load of BLV-infected cattle and clarified their DRB3 alleles. Fifty-seven animals with DRB3*...

Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is a retrovirus responsible for lymphoproliferative disorders in cattle. Although infections of BLV in animals are well known, little is known about its capacity to infect humans. This study investigated the presence of anti-BLV antibodies and BLV proviruses in human and cattle samples. An indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect anti-BL...

Monoclonal integration of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) proviral DNA into bovine genomes was detected in peripheral blood from two clinical cases of enzootic bovine leukosis (EBL) without enlargement of superficial lymph nodes. A BLV-specific probe hybridized with 1 to 3 EcoRI and HindIII fragments in these 2 atypical EBL cattle by Southern blotting and hybridization, as well as in 3 typical EBL ...