Sel’skokhozyaistvennaya Biologiya [Agricultural Biology], 2013, № 4, p. 48-52 UDC 636:619:616.98:578 AKABANE AND SCHMALLENBERG DISEASES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES E.G. Nikitina, N.I. Sal’nikov, E.O. Khan, E.A. Balashova, S.Zh. <...> Tsybanov, D.V. Kolbasov All-Russia Research Institute of Veterinary Virology and Mirobiology, Russia Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Pokrov, Vladimir Region, 601120 Russia, e-mail: VNIIVViM@niiv.petush.elcom.ru, balashowa.l@yandex.ru Received May 6, 2013 S umma r y The article describes the characteristics of Schmallenberg and Akabane viruses that cause disease in cattle, sheep and goats. <...> Despite the relationship of Schmallenberg and Akabane viruses and a similarity of the clinical picture and pathological changes, there are also differences. <...> Under Akabane virus infection, an encephalitis is observed in adult cattle, whereas such cases are not yet registered under the Schmallenberg disease. <...> The authors have developed the test systems for detection of Akabane virus RNA by polymerase chain reaction and Schmallenberg virus genome by reverse transcription—polymerase chain reaction in real time (RT-PCR). <...> For Akabane and Smallenberg viruses RNA detecting, a real time reverse transcriptase PCR-based tests have been developed by the authors. <...> Significant economic loss caused by these viruses result from lower milk yield, high incidence of miscarriage, still birth, and neonatal mortality in infected livestock. <...> Schmallenberg disease in sheep and goats is expressed with more severe course than in cattle: while similar clinical symptoms, there is higher rate of mortality, cachexia, and degenerative changes in reproductive organs of breeding livestock. <...> In Akabane disease, clinical and pathoanatomical manifestations in sheep and goats are similar to those of bovines (1, 7, 8). <...> In cases of infestation at later phase of gestation, newborn calves survive, but they show polymyositis, hydrocephaly, hydroencephaly, jaundice, and skin hemorrhages. <...> Along with physical deformities, aborted fetuses, stillborn and newborn calves show abnormalities in the central nervous system – inflammatory lesions of varying degrees, neuronophagia, proliferation of glial cells (1, 9-11). <...> Nonpurulent encephalomyelitis was observed mostly in the early phase of Akabane infection episode, in the second phase along with arthrogryposis there dominated hydroencephaly with cerebral pathology. <...> Most often such <...>