Survival analysis of confirmed elephant endotheliotropic herpes virus cases in Thailand from 2006 - 2018

Abstract

© 2019 Public Library of Science. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) has been a known cause of death of young elephants in Thailand for over a decade. In this study, we report on the demography, disease characteristics and mortality of 58 elephants with confirmed EEHV hemorrhagic disease between January 2006 and August 2018 using retrospective data subjected to survival analysis. Median age of EEHV presentation was 29 months, and the mortality rate was 68.97% with a median survival time of 36 h. Most EEHV cases occurred in the north of Thailand, the region where most of the country's captive elephants reside. The hazard ratio analysis identified application of medical procedures and antiviral medications as being significant factors correlated to the risk of death. Our results indicate a need to focus EEHV monitoring efforts on young elephants and to follow current protocols that advise starting treatments before clinical signs appear.