During 2005, velogenic Newcastle disease virus (NDV) caused a major outbreak among commercial broiler chicken in Egypt. The outbreak raised concerns regarding the protective immunity of commercially available vaccines for prevention and control of this virus in poultry. The virus was isolated from broiler farm suffered from more than 95% mortalities. The isolate was confirmed not to be avian influenza virus (AIV) by rapid chromatographic strip test, and characterized as NDV using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) which amplified a portion of the fusion gene of NDV and haemagglutination inhibition (HI) test. This isolate confirmed to be velogenic viscerotropic NDV by mean death time (MDT) test and pathogenicity to 7-week old chickens. We tried to determine whether the existing commercial live NDV La Sota vaccine could provide protection against the isolated virus or not. Birds received a single dose of live La Sota type vaccine at 3 weeks of age and were challenged 2 weeks postvaccination with a lethal dose of NDV. Results indicated that the live vaccine did not protect against morbidity but reduced mortality in comparison to controls. All unvaccinated control chickens challenged with NDV died within 5 days post-challenge (pc). Protection from disease did not correlate with the presence of antibody titers (determined by HI) at day of challenge. These results underscore the need to develop new NDV vaccines and vaccine strategies for use during outbreak situations to protect birds from both disease and infection and to reduce virus shedding.

The present study deals with a monogenean parasite infecting, some marine fish through light and scan electron microscopy. It revealed that the percentage of infection was 48% (14 out of 50 fish), 28% (14 out of 50 fish), 22% (11 out of 50 fish) and 16% (8 out of 50 fish) in Diplodus noct, Gerres oyena, Lethrinus elongates and Siganus revulatus, respectively. The present work recorded Paranaella diplodae (Polyopisthocotylea; Microcotylidae; Monogenea) as a new species collected from the investigated fish gills. They are lanculate flukes, the haptor is not distinguished from the body proper approximately 1/3 of the whole body length. The surface topography of the parasite bears small pits and conspicuous transverse folds and richly supplied with papillae-like unicellate sensory ending. The opisthohaptor is typical of Microcotylidae. The clamp structure and the haptoral tegument are similar to the rest of the body

Seroprevalence of Babesia ovis in sheep and goats was studied in Siwa Oasis between January 2002 and January 2003. A total of 240 blood samples were collected from 108 sheep and 132 goats for preparation of blood smears and for separation of serum samples and tested against B. ovis by using IFAT. B. ovis was detected in 55 (50.92%) and 59 (44.69%) blood smears examined in sheep andgoats, respectively. The overall prevalence of B. ovis infection was 71.3% in sheep and 68.2% in goat using IFAT. The seasonal prevalence of B.ovis peaked in both spring and summer as revealed by blood smear examination and IFAT. A total of 143 ticks were collected from 62 sheep and 81 goats during the study. The ticks examined were Rhipicephalus turanicus (75.52%) and Hyalomma anatolicum (24.48%).