Is it true that parvovirus infection is a new disease?
Posted by Dog Supplies Advice in Dog Supplies Q&A, Dog Supplies Tips, tags: Dog, Dog Advice, dog care, Dog Health, Dog Infectious Diseases, dog Q&A, dog supplies, dog supplies advice, Dog Vaccination, Infectious Diseases, Pet Supplies, VaccinationIs it true that parvovirus infection is a new disease?
Yes, indeed it appears that canine parvovirus (CPV) infection is a genuinely new disease, and not just one that has been newly recognized. The testing of blood serum samples collected from dogs both before and after the first outbreaks occurred has produced no evidence (in the form of antibody against the virus) that the disease existed before 1978. In that year outbreaks were reported in North America, Australia, South Africa and Europe. Most countries can now be considered as infected.
The group known as parvoviruses consists of very small viruses (parvo simply means small), and includes the virus known as feline pan leukopenia (FPL) virus, responsible for the important disease of that name (otherwise known as feline infectious enteritis) occurring in cats. It has been strongly suggested that the canine parvovirus is actually a new genetic variant, i.e. a mutation, of the FPL virus (two other variants are already known), and that this mutant may have been an unsuspected contaminant of some widely distributed biological product manufactured for use in dogs. Otherwise it is difficult to account for the sudden, dramatic appearance of CPV infection simultaneously in so many different parts of the world.
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