Investigations into Macrophage-Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) Interaction and Shell-less Egg Syndrome
Date
2018-08-29
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Abstract
Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) is a coronavirus and infects chickens globally causing economic losses. The disease caused by IBV is known as infectious bronchitis (IB) and is prevalent in commercial broiler and layer chickens and breeder flocks in Canada. The control of IB relies on vaccination done on the day of hatch and then several times during the grower period depending on the purpose of rearing the chickens. Although the vaccine-induced immunity protects chickens from production losses induced by IBV infection, vaccine failures are frequent. Given the issues in current IB control measures, sustainable control measures developed understanding the host-IBV interaction is required. The studies conducted in the thesis focused in two major areas; 1) understanding the interaction between IBV and host immune system mainly macrophages and 2) investigating the role of IBV in a recently emerged concern of Western Canadian table-egg layer industry, shell-less egg syndrome (SES). The work described in chapter 2 of the thesis led to the finding that IBV replicates in avian macrophages in vivo and in vitro. In vitro, we showed that IBV not only targets macrophages leading to productive infection but also affects selected functions of macrophages, particularly the production of nitric oxide (NO). As shown in chapter 3, IBV infection upregulates the expression of interleukin (IL)-1β in both tracheal and lung tissues. An additional observation made was that there was a significant association between the IBV genome load and macrophage recruitment in lungs. Overall, we found that macrophages can act as a source of cytokines, which is beneficial against IBV infection. However, the ability of IBV to replicate within macrophage by decreasing selected immune functions can be detrimental to the host. Chapter 4 provides details of our work leading to the elucidation of the etiology of SES. First, molecular characterization showed that about 70% of the IBV strains isolated from layer flocks affected with SES in Western Canada were Massachusetts (Mass) genotype. Infection of layer chickens with one of the Mass IBV isolate induced shell-less eggs. The work of chapter 5 compared two Mass IBV isolates recovered from Western Canadian layer flocks for whole genome variations and documented the differences in pathogenicity, tissue distribution, and macrophage response. The knowledge generated in the thesis increased the understanding of IBV-macrophage interaction, documented the IBV genotypes observable in Western Canada layer flocks and elucidated the etiology of SES observed in layer operations in Canada.
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Keywords
Macrophage, Infectious bronchitis virus, Shell gland, shell-less egg, Interleukin 1β, Molecular epidemiology, layer chicken, spike protein gene, Western Canada
Citation
Amarasinghe, A. (2018). Investigations into Macrophage-Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) Interaction and Shell-less Egg Syndrome (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32880