Seeing beyond a dilated proventriculus: Diagnostic tools for proventricular dilatation disease in psittacine birds

Abstract

Proventricular dilatation disease (PDD) is a life‐threatening neurological disease caused by parrot bornaviruses (PaBVs) that affects several species worldwide. PDD can be clinically mani-fested as either a central nervous system condition or a gastrointestinal condition if the nerves and ganglia of the gastrointestinal tract are compromised. We intend to provide a concise review for veterinary clinicians and diagnosticians with focus on the main tools available for PDD diagnosis, including gross and histopathology, immunohistochemistry, molecular techniques and serology. We suggest that a combination of different strategies can increase the success of diagnostic out-comes, as tools such as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) can be implemented for identification of bornaviral infections in live patients, and gross pathology, histopathology, immunohistochemistry and RT‐PCR can provide reliable results for postmortem diagnosis of PDD.