D.J Paton

TL;DR: A polymerase chain reaction-based assay capable of detecting a broad range of pestiviruses from pigs, cattle, or sheep was developed and the best results were provided by a pair from the highly conserved 5′ non-coding region which gave amplification with all 129 isolates tested.

TL;DR: Seventy-eight bovine viral diarrhoea viruses recently collected in Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and UK were genetically typed in the 5′-untranslated and autoprotease regions of the pestivirus genome, suggesting significant antigenic similarities within the BVDV-1 genotype.

TL;DR: The expanding data-base of CSFV sequences should improve the prospects of disease tracing in the future, and provide a basis for a standardised approach to ensure that results from different laboratories are comparable.

TL;DR: Dairy herds in East Anglia and the south-east of England had a significantly lower risk of being BVDV antibody-positive than herds in the rest of England and Wales, however, these regional differences tended to diminish with increasing herd size.

TL;DR: An assay was developed in which reverse transcription, nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and accumulation of amplicon-specific fluorescence could take place in a single, closed reaction tube, which was very sensitive, and less prone to giving false positive results compared to nested PCR carried out in separate reaction tubes.