Infectious bursal disease: evaluation of pathogenicity of commercial vaccines from Brazil in specific pathogen free chichens

Abstract

Infectious Bursal Disease (IBD) is a chicken disease economically important for the poultry industry in function of the immune depression that it causes. Disease control is made with different vaccines and vaccination programs. In present work, the pathogenicity of 3 intermediate vaccines (I1, I2 and I3), 2 intermediate more pathogenic (IP1 and IP2) and 3 vaccines containing strong virus (F1, F2 and F3) was evaluated. Birds vaccinated with IP1, IP2, F1, F2 and F3 showed significantly lower bursa size in relation to control animals and animals vaccinated with I1, I2 and I3. On the other hand, vaccines I1 and I3 induced antibody titers higher than the control and lower than I2, IP1, IP2, F1, F2 and F3. Histological scores showed that vaccines I1, I2 and I3 induced similar injury degree, although I2 and I3 were not different from the control, whereas I1 was slightly different. Strong vaccines induced more pronounced lesions than the other tested vaccines. These findings suggest that strong vaccines are able to cause severe bursal injuries. However, bursometry and relative weight of the bursa of Fabricius wereconsidered inadequate to evaluate vaccine pathogenicity. Moreover, strong vaccines induced higher antibody titers than the other vaccines, although some intermediate vaccines induced similar titers.