Bovine Coronavirus Infection: Pathology and Interspecies Transmission

Bovine diarrhea is one of the major diseases that cause major economic damage to farmers. There are many kinds of viral diseases that cause diarrhea in cattle. Among them, bovine coronavirus infection and bovine rotavirus infection are known as diseases that frequently occur throughout the world, and whose incidence and numbers of infected cattle are particularly large. Both viruses cause diarrhea in newborn calves, but bovine coronavirus (BCoV), lead to more economic damage because they also cause a type of diarrhea in adult cattle called winter dysentery (WD) and respiratory disease. However, since it is generally difficult to isolate coronaviruses from cultured cells, and these viruses have huge RNAs of about 30kb, research on coronaviruses, including genomic analysis, have not advanced sufficiently to cope with this problem. Recent reports have suggested that BCoV is able to overcome host range barriers with relative ease and even to transmit to humans. It has thus become necessary to consider their significance as zoonosis, even though much about the ecology of BCoV remains unknown. This paper will outline bovine coronavirus infection and describe BCoV characteristics that have been reported so far.