Abstract
Chicken infectious anaemia virus (CIAV) is an economically important pathogen affect- ing poultry industry worldwide, and renders birds susceptible to secondary infections. The present study was designed to investigate the systemic immunosuppressive effects of CIAV on T lympho- cytes bearing CD4 and CD8 receptors using flow cytometry and hematological parameters during experimental subclinical infection in chicks. Forty specific pathogen free (SPF) chicks of 6 weeks of age were randomly and equally divided into two groups. Infected group received 10 4.5 TCID 50 of CIAV while control chicks were mock inoculated. All the chicks were regularly monitored for clinical signs, hematology parameters and CD4 + and CD8 + cell populations in spleen and blood. The experimental CIAV infection was confirmed by PCR testing of the tissue samples of experimental chicks, using VP2 gene specific primers, which yielded an expected amplicon size of 651 base pairs. The analysis of the hematological parameters showed significant decline in hematocrit value (PCV), total leukocyte count (TLC) and peripheral lymphocyte count (PLC) after 15 days post infection (dpi) but with no clinical signs of CIA. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that the percentage of CD4 + CD8 - and CD4 - CD8 + T cells significantly decreased in the virus infected chicks at 15 dpi both in the spleen and blood (p<0.05). The results supported the fact that subclinical CIAV infections are also immunodepressive in nature; the virus replicates in primary lymphoid tissues and induces immunosuppression by decreasing both CD4 + and CD8 + T cells in chicks.
Highlights
Chicken infectious anaemia virus (CIAV) is an important poultry pathogen, which causes chicken infectious anaemia (CIA), a clinical disease affecting young chickens of up to 3-4 weeks of age
CD4 and CD8 T cell population analysis In the spleen, the percentage of CD4-CD8+ cells was greater as compared CD4+CD8- to CD4+CD8+ cells
In the present study,distinctive haematological changes were observed in the CIAV infected chicks
Summary
Chicken infectious anaemia virus (CIAV) is an important poultry pathogen, which causes chicken infectious anaemia (CIA), a clinical disease affecting young chickens of up to 3-4 weeks of age. Subclinical infections characterized by production losses and vaccine associated complications can act as source of infection to other flocks (McNulty et al, 1991; Dhama et al, 2008). The virus infection increases the susceptibility of birds to secondary infections and due to its profound immunosuppressive effects, even vaccination failures may occur, altogether leading to huge economic losses to the poultry industry worldwide (Pope, 1991; Hagood et al, 2000; Dhama et al, 2008; Bhatt et al, 2011). The CIA has attained much importance due to the frequent outbreaks in commercial poultry farms in various countries and is considered as one of the emerging diseases with potential to act as severe threat to the poultry industry at global level (Ducatez et al, 2006; Ducatez et al, 2008; Kim et al, 2010; Oluwayelu, 2010; Bhatt et al, 2011; Snoeck et al, 2012; Nayabian and Mardani, 2013)
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