A Comparative Study of Pathology and Host Immune Response Induced by Very Virulent Infectious Bursal Disease Virus in Experimentally Infected Chickens of Aseel and White Leghorn Breeds

Shyama N Prabhu; Ajay Pratap Singh; Berin P Varghese; Kuldeep Dhama; Shambhu Dayal Singh; Rajendra Singh

doi:10.3390/vaccines8040627

A Comparative Study of Pathology and Host Immune Response Induced by Very Virulent Infectious Bursal Disease Virus in Experimentally Infected Chickens of Aseel and White Leghorn Breeds

Vaccines (Basel). 2020 Oct 26;8(4):627. doi: 10.3390/vaccines8040627.

Authors

Shyama N Prabhu¹, Ajay Pratap Singh², Berin P Varghese³, Kuldeep Dhama⁴, Shambhu Dayal Singh⁴, Rajendra Singh⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Veterinary Pathology, College of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry, Deen Dayal Upadhayay Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalay Evum Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura UP 281001, India.
² Department of Veterinary Microbiology, College of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry, Deen Dayal Upadhayay Pashu Chikitsa Vigyan Vishwavidyalay Evum Go-Anusandhan Sansthan (DUVASU), Mathura UP 281001, India.
³ The Avrum Gudelsky Veterinary Center, College Park, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
⁴ Division of Pathology, ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly UP 243 122, India.

Abstract

Indigenous breeds of young chickens in India are believed to be resistant to the classical strain of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). However, the mechanism underlying this resistance is obscure. Innate immunity is a key factor in defining the clinical course and pathology of microbial infections. The present study is aimed to compare the pathology of very virulent IBDV (vvIBDV) and immunological host response in experimentally infected - vaccinated and unvaccinated indigenous Aseel and commercial White Leghorn chickens. The viral loads and innate immune gene expression profiles of MDA-5, Mx, IFN-α, and IFN-β in different lymphoid organs were analyzed by quantitative PCR. The histopathological scores in Aseel birds were lower than in White Leghorns despite comparable viral loads. The degrees of histopathological lesions were fewer in vaccinated birds than in unvaccinated birds of both breeds. Analysis of innate immune response genes revealed that the cytoplasmic pattern recognition receptor MDA-5 gene was overexpressed mainly in the cecal tonsils of both vaccinated and nonvaccinated White Leghorn chickens. An increase in the expression of the IFN-α gene was seen in the cecal tonsils of Aseels, and an increase in IFN-β gene expression was seen in the thymuses of White Leghorns following vvIBDV challenge both in vaccinated and nonvaccinated birds. In addition, we observed that the Mx gene plays a minimal role, if any, in vvIBDV infection of the breeds under study. It remains interesting and important that although vvIBDV causes disease in indigenous Aseel birds, the faster clearance and reduced pathology of the virus in Aseel birds compared to White Leghorn chicken indicate some unidentified innate immune factors that are limiting IBDV in this breed. Further studies will be required to correlate kinetics of humoral and cellular immune response in relation to the virus load in different organs to illuminate the mechanism of genetic resistance in native breeds of chicken.

Keywords: immune response; infectious bursal disease; pathology.