Abstract

Newcastle disease (NDV) is one of the endemic pathogenic viral diseases in many developing countries that economically significant because of the huge mortality and morbidity associated with it. NDV was identified with the advent of large scale commercial poultry farming toward the beginning of the 20th century. NDV has lured the virologists not only because of its pathogenic potential, and its use as a vaccine vector for both humans and animals. The NDV based recombinant vaccine offers a pertinent choice for the construction of live attenuated vaccine due to its modular nature of transcription, minimum recombination frequency, and lack of DNA phase during replication. In developed countries with established poultry industries, not only are outbreaks of NDV extremely costly, but control measurers present a continuing loss to the industry.NDV is prevented and controlled through vaccination, confinement, and slaughter of affected flocks in confirmed outbreaks. Birds have been vaccinated against NDV using live attenuated vaccines, inactivated NDV vaccines, and recombinant vaccinations. Regrettably, the disease continues to strike and cause major outbreaks. Therefore, we aimed to review the virological and molecular studies on Newcastle disease virus.