assessment of influenza a virus infection in horses of west azerbaijan province using competitive elisa

Equine influenza is an extremely contagious respiratory disease of horses caused by the influenza a virus. the present study aimed to determine the prevalence of influenza a virus infection in horses of west azerbaijan province, north-west iran. a total of 184 horse serum samples were collected from four localities and tested by competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect antibodies against the nucleoprotein of the influenza a virus. data were analyzed for the effect of gender, age, and location on seropositivity by the chi-square, fisher's exact, and logistic regression tests. the prevalence rate was estimated to be 5.4% (95% ci: 2.14–8.66%). based on regression analysis, the odds of infection based on age in years was 0.581 (95% ci: 0.176–1.916) (p > 0.05), and age explained -0.544% of the variations in infection. the relative frequency of infection in male and female horses was 2.6 and 7.4%, respectively (p > 0.05), and the odds of infection in females compared with male horses was 2.72 (95% ci: 0.536–13.794). sex explained 1.001% of infection variations. the prevalence rate in sardasht, urmia, khoy, and chaldoran was 4%, 4.8%, 6.2%, and 6.8%, respectively. a non-significant increase in prevalence was observed from the south to the north of the province (p > 0.05). geographical location explained 0.047% of infection variations. the final summary of results indicates that exposure to the influenza a virus is very low in horses of the studied regions.