The Clinical picture of the enzootic and sporadic forms of bovine leukosis

Abstract

As enzootic lymphatic leukosis of adult cattle has been the most frequent tumorous ailment in large ruminants in our country. It became notifiable in 1965 and an official program was elaborated to eradicate it in the Federal Republic of Germany (and in other European countries). Contrary to the other forms of bovine leukosis, animals infected by the BL-virus develop (within 2 weeks to 3 months) specific antibodies in their serum; these antibodies serve to detect the carriers of the virus at an early state, when all the other symptoms eneumerated here are still lacking. Since the introduction of the serological control campaign in 1978 which uses the agar-gel immuno-diffusion-test and gradually superceded the former control by counting the number of circulation lymphocytes to find the animals affected with persistent lymphocytosis, we only very rarely get cases of tumorous enzootic leukosis in our clinic; therefore, the following report is based on an earlier situation and these animals were, at that time, not been tested serologically:

We had a total of 470 cases of tumorous leukosis of all types as indoor patients during the 15 years from 1960 to 1974. Among them, 439 were of the enzootic lymphatic adult type; 27 concerned calves with juvenile or adolescent (thymic) lymphatic leukosis, one animal suffered from lymphatic leukosis of the skin ( and we saw two more cases of this kind in the meantime); two patients showed monocytic leukosis and one animal was diagnosed as mastocytic reticulosis with tissue mast-cells in the blood, so we may classify it as mastocytic leukosis.