engleski

Abundance of ChIFN-alpha and ChIFN-gamma mRNA in blood of broilert chickens during an outbreak of chicken infectious anaemia.

An outbreak of chicken infectious anaemia (CIA) occurred in several Croatian farms early in 2001. The source of infection was traced to Ross birds from a broiler breeder farm. The clinical signs and pathologic lesions appeared at two weeks of age and were typical of CIA. We investigated one affected farm that had 9, 295 chicks. Mortality peaked the third week at 8% and total mortality was 13.6%. Affected chickens were anaemic with haematocrits less than 0.27. Antibody levels for CIA virus (CIAV), measured with an indirect ELISA, peaked at 3 weeks of age. Blood samples from clinically affected and non-affected chickens were positive for CIAV by PCR and a competitive nucleic acid hybridisation assay (Novak and Ragland, 2001). Abundance of mRNA for interferon alpha and gamma in blood from 8 chickens was measured at weekly intervals by a competitive nucleic acid assay (Novak et al., 2001). Abundance in the affected flock was significantly less (p˛0.05) at most intervals than abundance in 3 clinically healthy flocks. A larger sample size might have resulted in significant difference at each interval. As we (unpublished observations) and others (McConnell et al., 1993) have shown that subclinical infections with CIAV and infectious bursal disease virus interfere with induction for interferon, we suggest measuring abundance of mRNA for interferon in chicken blood to assess immune status of commercial chickens. Further work will be necessary to confirm this possibility.

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