Serological relatedness of cervine herpesvirus-1 and bovine herpesvirus-1 and the prevalence of cervine herpesvirus-1 infection in farmed deer in New Zealand

Recently, we reported the prevalence of bovine herpesvirus-1 (BoHV-1) infection in farmed red deer (Cervus elaphus) in New Zealand as 32% (Motha et al, 2000). Soon after, a herpesvirus was isolated from a red deer semen sample and this isolate was identified as cervine herpesvirus-1 (CvHV-1) by restriction fragment length polymorphism and polymerase chain reaction analysis (Tisdall and Rowe, 2001). In this communication, we report the serological relatedness of CvHV-1 and BoHV-1 by virus neutralisation test (VNT) and the prevalence of antibodies to CvHV-1 in the farmed deer population of New Zealand.