Sero-Survey of Equine Infectious Anemia in the
Sultanate of Oman
during 2007-2009
Mohammed Body, Abdulmajeed Al-Rawahi, M. Hammad Hussain*, Khalisa
Al-Lamki, Saif Al-Habsy, Mahir Almaawali and Qais Abdullah Alrawahi
Veterinary Research Center, Directorate General of Agriculture and
Livestock Research, Ministry of Agriculture, Postal Code 121, PO Box
50 Seeb, The Sultanate of Oman
*Corresponding Author:m.hammad.hussain@gmail.com
Abstract
Equine infectious anemia
(EIA) is a fatal and relapsing infectious disease of equines caused by the
lentivirus of Retroviridae family which occurs world-wide. It tends to become an
inapparent infection if death does not result from the acute clinical attack.
The virus persists in infected animals for life and can be detected by
serological tests like enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and agar gel
immunodiffusion (AGID) tests. Keeping in view the importance of EIA, a sero-survey
and passive surveillance was designed to establish the status of EIA in Oman. For the current study, ELISA was carried out on 331 random horse serum
samples collected from all over Oman and 262 serum samples submitted from race
horses. Four (0.67%) out of total 593 serum samples were found positive on
ELISA. These samples were further tested by agar gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test
for the confirmation and were found negative. Based on the analysis of the
samples, it can be assumed that the horse population in the Sultanate was free
of the disease during the study period (2007-2009).