IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL RESERVOIR HOST OF AVIAN INFLUENZA VIRUS FROM TWO SELECTED DISTRICTS IN BANGLADESH

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was first reported in Bangladesh in 2007, since then the disease has become entrenched in the poultry industry of Bangladesh. It still remains to be answered which climatic factors lead to seasonal perpetuation of HPAI outbreaks and what serves as the reservoir for the persistence of HPAI. Domestic scavenging ducks may be the reservoir host of Avian Influenza virus (AIV) in Bangladesh where native ducks are the closest neighbours of native chicken. Therefore, the objectives of this study were isolation and identification of AIV type A from domestic scavenging ducks in some selected areas in Bangladesh, namely, Savar and Bogra and detection of seroprevalence of AIV within the selected areas. For seroprevalence study, 92 sera samples were collected to perform ELISA test for the detection of antibody of AIV type A in the domestic scavenging ducks. The overall seroprevalence of AI was 48.91%. For the isolation and identification of avian influenza virus type A, a total of 544 cloacal swabs were collected from domestic scavenging ducks and investigated for virus isolation through hemagglutination (HA) test and then virus was identified by the molecular technique, RT-PCR. In this study, 1.47% samples of harvested allantoic fluid (AF) were found to be positive by HA and a total of 0.37% samples were positive by RT-PCR with the AIV NP specific primer set finally. It can be said that domestic scavenging ducks have potential roles in carrying AIV by the analysis of the results of present study.