Comparative Studies between sheep pox & contagious pustular pustular dermatitis viruses

A disease was diagnosed clinically in the field as contagious pustular dermatitis in two out-breaks infecting native Rahmani and Barki foreign breedsheep. The buccal lesions were undistinguish~d from the contagious pustular dermatitis lesions. The dis-ease affected young lambs without considerable infection to the mothers. No generalization of the lesionswas observed on the skin of the infected lambs. A third outbreak infecting native Rahmani sheep was alsodiagnosed clinically as contagious pustular dermatitis infection since the lesions were those indicative to such infection. Three cytopathogenic agents were isolated in tissue culture from Samples No.l. 2 and -3 taken fromthe infected sheep of the previously mentioned three outbreaks respectively. Comparative studies were done for virus isolation in different primary monolayer cultures and cell lines. Characterization by standardizedvirological methods revealed that the first two isolates were sheep pox virus indicating that the first two.