Environmental pollution was proposed as a cause of deaths and the possibility of a major human health hazard could not be excluded. Tissues collected from seals found dead along the Caspian coasts of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan were sent for analyses to DARD's veterinary laboratory in Belfast. There, they were examined for evidence of microscopic changes that could help pin-point the cause of the epidemic. DARD veterinary scientists found lesions characteristic of canine distemper and demonstrated the presence of a morbillivirus infection in the seal tissues. In collaboration with workers at the Institute of Animal Health, Pirbright, England and the Erasmus medical University, Rotterdam, this morbillivirus has been confirmed as canine distemper virus.
Canine distemper virus more commonly causes disease in dogs and other species of land carnivore.
Although related to measles virus of humans, it is not normally transmissible to humans. This finding will help calm fears that the cause of the epidemic would present a major health risk to human populations in the affected regions. The detailed results of this international team of researchers, which also includes scientists from Scotland, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan will be published in a forthcoming issue of the scientific journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases. DARD scientists previously identified morbillivirus infections as the cause of mass mortalities among seals in northwestern Europe in 1988, bottlenose dolphins along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the united States in 1987 and 1993, and in striped dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea in 1990. This expertise was developed as a result of VSD having to investigate the cause of the major seal epidemic along the coast of Northern Ireland in 1998.