What’s the difference between acute/transient infection and persistent infection?
There are two types of BVDV infection Persistent Infection (PI) or transient infection Transient infections cause adult animal acute diarrhea, high fever, epithelial lesions, anorexia, and suppressed immunity. As a result, a cow’s health will be weakened leaving it vulnerable to secondary infections and greater problems including scours, pneumonia, lost milk production, and deformed or stillborn calves. By contrast, PI animals often have no clinical appearance of infection and cannot be easily detected. They are lifetime carriers of the virus and can quickly infect herd mates, as well as introduce the disease to other herds. PIs receive exposure to the virus in utero. The calf is infectious from birth, shedding several billion viral particles a day and infecting other cattle immediately. Some estimates are that 70-90 percent of all BVDV infections are PI, leaving most cases of BVDV perilously undetected. BoVir® accurately identifies and differentiates both persistent infection and tran
