Short communication. Occurrence of different Canine distemper virus lineages in Italian dogs

This study describes the sequence analysis of the H gene of 7 Canine distemper virus (CDV) strains identified in dogs in Italy between years 2002-2012. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the CDV strains belonged to 2 clusters: 6 viruses were identified as Arctic‑like lineage and 1 as Europe 1 lineage. These data show a considerable prevalence of Arctic‑like‑CDVs in the analysed dogs. The dogs and the 3 viruses more recently identified showed 4 distinctive amino acid mutations compared to all other Arctic CDVs.