Diagnosis and molecular characterization of chicken anaemia virus.

Chicken infectious anemia (CIA) is an emerging disease especially of young chickens and has proved considerable health problems and economic losses to the poultry industry worldwide. The disease is characterized by aplastic anemia, hemorrhages in the muscle and subcutaneous tissue, thymus atrophy and immunosuppression. CIA infection is relatively easy to identify based on the pathognomic signs and lesions exhibited by the affected flock.Tentatively it can usually be made based on flock history, clinical signs, haematological changes and gross pathological findings in affected birds. For confirmatory diagnosis isolation and identification of the CIAV is done. Reduced haematocrit (PCV) values are the sensitive indicator to identify clinically affected birds with CIAV following experimental exposure. Monitoring of CIAV infection by virus isolation, antigen and CIAVspecific antibody detection by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), virus neutralization test (VNT), immunofluorescent test (IFT) and immunoperoxidase test (IPT), along with application of molecular diagnostic tools such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), nucleic acid hybridization and sequencing etc. can be used for confirmatory diagnosis of CIAV infection.