Ovine adenovirus serotype 7 infection in a lamb

Abstract Adenoviruses are non‐enveloped, double‐stranded DNA viruses with the potential to cause major diseases across many diverse animal species. So far, eight serotypes of ovine adenovirus (OAdV) have been described, belonging to two genera: OAdV‐1 to OAdV‐6 and OAdV‐8 to genus Mastadenovirus , and OAdV‐7 to genus Barthadenovirus . We report OAdV‐7 infection (strain E11) in a 10‐day‐old lamb that died following weakness, inappetence, tenesmus and star gazing for 3 days. No other aetiological agents were identified. Microscopic lesions included multifocal acute necrotising interstitial cortical nephritis and hepatocellular necrosis associated with numerous basophilic intranuclear inclusions. The intranuclear inclusions appeared to be within endothelial cells. No inclusions were seen in hepatocytes. Next‐generation sequencing was carried out on frozen liver tissue and generated a complete ovine adenovirus genome, which corresponded to that of the OAdV‐7 reported in GenBank (accession number U40839.3). Phylogenetic analysis clustered the virus in the genus Barthadenovirus .