Lumpy skin disease (LSD)

04.04.2024

Lumpy skin disease (LSD)

Why in the  news?             

According to recent reports, scientists are trying to track how lumpy skin disease killed more than 1,00,000 cows in India.

Important points:

• A team of Indian scientists has made significant progress in understanding the genetic structure of the virus responsible for lumpy skin disease, which has caused the death of nearly 1,00,000 cattle since May 2022.
• The research, with a multi-institutional team led by Professor Utpal Tatu in the Department of Biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), is working to unravel the origin and evolution of LSD virus (LSDV) strains.

About lumpy skin disease:

• It is an infectious viral disease of cattle.
• It is caused by Lumpy Skin Disease Virus (LSDV), which belongs to the Capripoxvirus genus.
• It is a part of the Poxviridae family (smallpox and monkeypox viruses are also part of the same family).
• LSDV is not a zoonotic virus, meaning the disease cannot spread to humans.
• Spread by blood-sucking insects such as flies and mosquitoes, the disease manifests itself through fever and skin lumps in cattle and can cause death.
• This disease spreads especially among those animals which have not been exposed to this virus before.
• It causes fever and skin lumps and can be fatal to cattle.
• The disease was first identified in Zambia in 1931.
• It remained confined to the sub-African region until 1989, after which it began spreading to the Middle East, Russia, and other south-east European countries, before spreading to South Asia.
• However, its spread in South Asia, especially India, marked a turning point with two major outbreaks; An initial one in 2019 and a more serious event in 2022, affecting more than two million cows.

Spread of this disease:

• Animals infected with this disease release the virus through oral and nasal secretions, which can contaminate common food and water sources.
• The disease can spread either through direct contact with vectors or through contaminated feed and water.

Symptoms of lumpy skin disease:

• LSD affects the infected animal's lymph nodes, causing their nodes to enlarge and appear as lumps on the skin, giving it its name.
• Skin lumps 2–5 cm in diameter appear on the head, neck, limbs, udder, genitalia and perineum of infected cattle.
• These lumps can later take the form of ulcers.
• Other symptoms of the disease include high fever, sharp decline in milk production, discharge from the eyes and nose, drooling, loss of appetite, depression, damaged hides, thinness or weakness of animals, infertility and abortion.

                                       Source: India Today