Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) can be responsible
for encephalitis in humans and horses and for
reproductive disorders in pigs. Birds are amplifying
hosts and JEV has been detected in different
organs. There are no published data showing the
presence of the virus in the organs of healthy
birds, captured during inter epidemic periods. We
report the results obtained from samples from 12
young birds collected in Italy in 2011 - 2012.
Serial sections from formalin-fixed and paraffinembedded
tissue samples were routinely
processed for histopathology, immunohistochemistry
(IHC; pAb, PG 10004, Genesis Biotech
Inc.) and Sybr Green real time PCR. IHC to JEV was positive in 9 of 12 bone marrows,
showing reaction products in stem cells concurrently
positive also for anti CD11b antibody. Four
of 12 bone marrows were positive by real time
PCR, while other samples showed low quality nucleic
acids.
JEV localization in bird’s bone marrow myeloid
lineage cells, suggest that monocytemacrophage
precursors may represent a target
cell for the virus, as recently demonstrated in the
arbovirus Chikungunya virus. Our results suggest
that birds could be reservoir for JEV maintaining
myeloid cells persistently infected with the virus
