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Immune status assessment by abundance of interferon alpha and gamma mRNA in chicken blood

Immunosuppression in chickens is a serious problem in commercial production of poultry. Current methods for assessing immune status are too slow and inaccurate to be useful. Based on the premise that immunosuppression would be reflected by reduced production of interferons (IFN), and that immunosuppressive viruses of chickens would interfere with transcription for IFN, competitive nucleic acid hybridisation in microtitre plate assay for chicken IFN mRNA was developed. Interferon was induced with inactivated Newcastle disease virus, RNA was preserved in Catrimox-14 and extracted, and abundance of mRNA for ChIFN-α and ChIFN-γ was measured. Transcription of ChIFN-α and ChIFN-γ genes was impaired in chickens immunosuppressed with cyclophosphamide. The three major immunosuppressive viruses of chickens, chicken anaemia virus, Marek’ s disease virus and infectious bursal disease virus interfered with ChIFN mRNA transcription, thus showing that immune status of chickens can be assessed by measurement of IFN-α and IFN-γ mRNA abundance in chicken blood.

chicken anaemia virus; ChIFN; infectious bursal disease virus; immunosuppression; Marek’ s disease virus; nucleic acid hybridisation

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