TY - JOUR AU - Fereidouni, Sasan AU - Freimanis, Graham AU - Orynbayev, Mukhit AU - Ribeca, Paolo AU - Flannery, John AU - King, Donald AU - Zuther, Steffen AU - Beer, Martin AU - Höper, Dirk AU - Kydyrmanov, Aidyn AU - Karamendin, Kobey AU - Kock, Richard T1 - Mass Die-Off of Saiga Antelopes, Kazakhstan, 2015 T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2019 VL - 25 IS - 6 SP - 1169 SN - 1080-6059 AB - In 2015, a mass die-off of ≈200,000 saiga antelopes in central Kazakhstan was caused by hemorrhagic septicemia attributable to the bacterium Pasteurella multocida serotype B. Previous analyses have indicated that environmental triggers associated with weather conditions, specifically air moisture and temperature in the region of the saiga antelope calving during the 10-day period running up to the event, were critical to the proliferation of latent bacteria and were comparable to conditions accompanying historically similar die-offs in the same areas. We investigated whether additional viral or bacterial pathogens could be detected in samples from affected animals using 3 different high-throughput sequencing approaches. We did not identify pathogens associated with commensal bacterial opportunisms in blood, kidney, or lung samples and thus concluded that P. multocida serotype B was the primary cause of the disease. KW - Pasteurella multocida KW - disease outbreaks KW - Kazakhstan KW - Pasteurella infections KW - antelopes KW - high-throughput sequencing KW - metagenomics KW - HTS KW - mass mortality KW - die-off KW - outbreaks KW - saiga KW - bacteria DO - 10.3201/eid2506.180990 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/6/18-0990_article ER - End of Reference