Abstract
In poultry, Escherichia coli is a common cause of high-cost infections. Consequently, autogenous vaccines are often used despite limited and conflicting evidence on their effectiveness have been presented. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of a commonly used autogenous vaccine, previously deemed ineffective, in an aerosol model of colibacillosis. Methods: Broiler breeders (n = 47) were randomly allocated to one of four groups (vaccinated and unvaccinated birds receiving an autogenous vaccine or sterile saline intramuscularly) and challenged with either aerosolised E. coli or vehicle at 29 weeks of age. Two days following inoculation, the birds were euthanised, thoroughly necropsied, and samples for bacteriology and histopathology were collected. Results: Vaccinated birds had a significantly lower bacteriology score compared to the unvaccinated group challenged with E. coli (p < 0.01) and a lower overall air sac lesion score (p < 0.05). Overall lung and spleen lesion scores only differed significantly between the unvaccinated E. coli challenged group compared to the vehicle inoculated groups. The overall gross pathology score was 2.8 and 1.95 in the unvaccinated and vaccinated E. coli challenge groups, respectively, whereas the vaccinated vehicle group had a score of 0.9 and the unvaccinated vehicle group a score of 1. Conclusions: A protective effect of an autogenous vaccine was found utilising an aerogenous model of colibacillosis through multiple methods of evaluation. The findings encourage the continued use of autogenous vaccines and underlines the necessity of discriminative experimental models with high predictive validity when evaluating vaccine interventions.
Highlights
In poultry, extraintestinal infections with Escherichia coli, collectively referred to as colibacillosis, are a major cause of mortality, impaired animal welfare, carcass downgrading, condemnations at slaughter and increase in the use of antibiotics [1]
The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of a commonly used autogenous vaccine, previously deemed ineffective, in an aerosol model of colibacillosis
Public health is of concern as noticeable commonalities have been identified between avian pathogenic E. coli (APEC) and human extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC), which has the potential to cause severe infections [2,3]
Summary
Extraintestinal infections with Escherichia coli, collectively referred to as colibacillosis, are a major cause of mortality, impaired animal welfare, carcass downgrading, condemnations at slaughter and increase in the use of antibiotics [1]. Following an E. coli outbreak in Denmark during late 2014–2015, leading to an increase in antibiotic use in the broiler meat production chain with approximately 184% [12], a vaccine strategy was implemented for the first time. This strategy was based upon Poulvac® E. coli and an autogenous vaccine containing the dominating outbreak strains [13] with the aim of protecting the broiler breeders, their progeny through vertical transmission of antibodies [14,15,16] as well as facilitating an overall reduction of APEC within the production system. To get insight into the protective capacity of the vaccination strategy, the aim of the present study was to experimentally evaluate the effect of the autogenous E. coli vaccine, routinely used in Danish broiler breeders, applying a novel, discriminative aerogenous infection model of colibacillosis
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