Bovine Immunodeficiency Virus is a Lentivirus which can cause varieties of infectious
complications and induce remarkable losses to dairy industry. Considering to the probability of
worldwide distribution of the BIV infection, this study was conducted for the first time in Iran to
determine of the status of BIV infection in the Holstein cattle and evaluate the associated findings.
According to the results of the Nested-PCR method in this study, 16.2% of 197 slaughtered Holstein
cattle in Meysam abattoir of Tehran were infective with BIV. Sequencing of the amplicons obtained
from PBLs of the cattle using gag-specific primers revealed that there was 98.7-98.9% homology
between this field strain and reference sequences of BIV. The infection rate of cattle with enlarged
heamal nodes was higher than the animals without these lesions (0.01
significant correlations between BIV infection rate and age, sex, BCS, clinical problems or
macroscopic lesions and enlarged lymph node as well as the anatomical situation of enlarged heamal
nodes. Flow cytometric analysis showed that the relative frequency of CD8+s in the infected animals
was significantly lower than the non- infected ones (0.01
differences between total leukocyte counts, relative frequencies of neutrophil, lymphocyte, CD4+,
CD21+, monocyte, eosinophil, hemoglobin and PCV of the infected and non- infected groups.
Lymphoid follicular hyperplasia- hypertrophia and in some cases depletion of lymphoid follicules in
the lymph and heamal nodes were the main histopathological findings of the infected cattle. The results
showed that the BIV infection rate of the surveyed Holstein cattle was relatively high.
)