Histopathological, and Molecular Characterization as well as Autogenous Immunization Trial of Bovine Papillomatosis (Wart) in Cattle, in Mekelle, Northern Ethiopia

Bovine papillomatosis (wart) is one of the economically important bovine skin diseases worldwide, caused by a group of viruses named papilloma viruses (PVs). However, no previous studies have described its status in Mekelle, northern Ethiopia, and hence, it has often been misdiagnosed as other skin diseases and remained untreated. In order to determine the status of the disease twenty-two farms were visited, and, out of 235 cattle with skin lesion examined, fourteen (14/235) were found infected with cutaneous papillomatosis. Papilloma biopsies were taken for molecular and histopathological characterization. The therapeutic trial of an autogenous vaccine was evaluated on infected animals. The overall status of bovine papillomatosis in this study was estimated at 5.96% (14/235). The disease was found to be statistically significance in the age groups less than two years (X2 = 26.69, P = 0.0001). The more prominent histological characterized lesions in the sampled tissue were identified as squamous papilloma and fibro-papilloma. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) based identification, revealed that all the clinically and histo-pathologically characterized papillomatosis cases were infected with Bovine Papilloma Virus1 (BPV1), indicating that BPV1 was the most common and sole causative agent of the disease in the study area. The autogenous vaccine therapeutic trial demonstrated promising outcomes. Upon visual inspection, the cutaneous bovine papillomatosis lesions completely regressed, resulting in full recovery and no recurrence of the infection. Hence, it was concluded that bovine papillomatosis is an economically important disease of young age cattle as well as a treatable disease. So, production of marketable autogenous vaccines against bovine papillomatosis should be started and be given at an early stage.