Abstract
Recently a fatal disease with muscular atrophy has often occurred in cultured juvenile abalone Nordotis discus at various hatcheries in Japan. The disease is characterized by the formation of tumors in the pleuro-pedal neuro-trunk. Nothing is known about the cause of the disease.
In order to investigate the cause of the disease, an infection experiment was made by exposing uninfected juvenile abalones to a 220 nm filtrate of diseased abalone homogenates and to the drain of an aquarium containing diseased abalones. As a result, the disease identical grossly and histopathologically to naturally diseased animals was produced by either method. This indicated that the disease was infectious and the causative agent might be a virus. The progress of the disease was suppressed when the ambient water temperature rose to 23°C or higher.
