Abstract
Widespread deaths of American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos)were associated with the 1999 outbreak of West Nile (WN) virus in the New York City region. We compared six organs from 20 crow carcasses as targets for WN virus detection. Half the carcasses had at least one positive test result for WN virus infection. The brain was the most sensitive test organ; it was the only positive organ for three of the positive crows. The sensitivity of crow organs as targets for WN virus detection makes crow death useful for WN virus surveillance.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (37.2 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Eidson M., Komar N., Sorhage F., Nelson R., Talbot T., Mostashari F., McLean R., West Nile Virus Avian Mortality Surveillance Group Crow deaths as a sentinel surveillance system for West Nile virus in the northeastern United States, 1999. Emerg Infect Dis. 2001 Jul-Aug;7(4):615–620. doi: 10.3201/eid0704.010402. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Komar N. West Nile viral encephalitis. Rev Sci Tech. 2000 Apr;19(1):166–176. doi: 10.20506/rst.19.1.1201. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lanciotti R. S., Kerst A. J., Nasci R. S., Godsey M. S., Mitchell C. J., Savage H. M., Komar N., Panella N. A., Allen B. C., Volpe K. E. Rapid detection of west nile virus from human clinical specimens, field-collected mosquitoes, and avian samples by a TaqMan reverse transcriptase-PCR assay. J Clin Microbiol. 2000 Nov;38(11):4066–4071. doi: 10.1128/jcm.38.11.4066-4071.2000. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Steele K. E., Linn M. J., Schoepp R. J., Komar N., Geisbert T. W., Manduca R. M., Calle P. P., Raphael B. L., Clippinger T. L., Larsen T. Pathology of fatal West Nile virus infections in native and exotic birds during the 1999 outbreak in New York City, New York. Vet Pathol. 2000 May;37(3):208–224. doi: 10.1354/vp.37-3-208. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]