Abstract

Parvoviruses infect a wide variety of hosts, from insects to primates. Human, Canine, feline, porcine, and others hosts stand out. Therefore, it is important to develop a diagnostic method that can demonstrate the presence of the viruses belonging to this family in any host species. For this work, Canine Parvovirus type 2 (CPV-2) and Carnivore protoparvovirus 1 (FPLV) were used as interspecies models, as they are prevalent diseases in the clinic of small animals.

One of the leading causes of hemorrhagic enteritis in dogs worldwide is caused by CPV-2 and FPLV. Feline panleukopenia produces a case like Canine Parvovirus but also generates a significant decrease in leukocytes. Therefore, Veterinarians need to have a highly sensitive diagnostic technique for both clinical forms. In the present work, the foundations were laid for implementing a protocol that uses conventional PCR to detect a DNA fragment of CPV-2 and FPLV from feces of dogs or cats with symptoms corresponding to parvovirus.

For the generation of the primers capable of detecting the newly named viruses, the GenBank database was first searched for nucleotide sequences of the complete CPV-2 and FPLV genome. With this information, 15 complete genome nucleotide sequences of both viruses were chosen and aligned using the Clustal Omega Software to obtain the consensus sequence of the complete genome of both viruses. Subsequently, the percentage of conservation of the genes coding for the Canine and Feline parvovirus proteins was obtained. It was found that the genes that code for the NS1 protein are the most conserved, so they were used to generate the primers to be used in the PCR for diagnosis.