First Description of a Carnivore Protoparvovirus Associated with a Clinical Case in the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus)

Abstract

Simple Summary One of the main threats to the Iberian lynx, an endangered species, is the possibility of infection by transmissible pathogens, including parvoviruses, a family of small and very resistant viruses. A lynx died with the signs of parvoviral infection. It developed the disease three weeks after being transported to a Recovery Centre from a hunting estate in the southern centre of the Iberian Peninsula, where a lynx population is known to inhabit, and died four days later. We screened the faecal material (n = 66) of other lynxes from the hunting estate using PCR but found no positive sample. However, we obtained the complete sequence of the parvovirus from the brain of the dead lynx. Taxonomically it has been typed as a feline parvovirus, in the species Protoparvovirus carnivoran1. To compare it with other circulating strains, we sequenced parvoviruses from a cat and a dog with parvoviral disease. The sequences of the lynx and the cat showed a high degree of similarity. They were also very closely related to other feline parvoviruses from Italy and Spain. This is the first description of the full genome of a parvovirus infecting the Iberian lynx associated with a clinical case, and points to the need to increase efforts to understand the pathogenicity of the disease process. Abstract One of the main threats for the survival of the Iberian lynx is infectious disease. Feline parvoviruses cause often fatal diseases in cats and have been isolated from different species of Felidae and other carnivores. The present study is the first description of a parvoviral sequence isolated from the brain of an Iberian lynx which died four weeks after being transferred to a quarantine centre from a hunting estate in Castilla-La-Mancha (southern border of the Iberian plateau). Four days prior to death, it had developed anorexia and muscle weakness. The nucleotide sequence, at 4589 nt long (GenBank PP781551), was most proximal to that isolated from a Eurasian badger in Italy but also showed great homology with others from cats and other carnivores isolated in Spain and Italy, including that from a cat sequenced by us to elucidate the origin of the infection, which has not been clarified. The phylogenetic analysis of the capsid protein, VP2, which determines tropism and host range, confirmed that the lynx sequence was most proximal to feline than to canine parvoviruses, and was thus typed as Protoparvovirus carnivoran1. More studies, including serology, are needed to understand the pathogenesis of this infection.