Occurrence and significance of Infectious Bronchitis virus variant strains in egg and broiler production in the Netherlands

Abstract

Despite vaccination against Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) with the Massachusetts type vaccine viruses H120 and H52 in the Netherlands, an increasing number of properly vaccinated flocks have suffered from the disease since 1978. In the years 1978-1982, the virus was isolated from 162 IBV suspected flocks. Cross-virus-neutralization tests showed that the majority (67 per cent) of these isolates belonged to serotypes other than the Massachusetts type, the Connecticut-, Florida-, Iowa 97-, Iowa 609- and JMK serotype. The majority of these Dutch isolates could be divided into 4 serogroups, called D207, D212, D3128 and D3896. Only a few isolates were not related to these serotypes. A survey of 328 flocks for antibody against these serotypes demonstrated that antibody against one or more of these novel serotypes were present in most of the flocks. Experiments demonstrated that vaccination with the H120 vaccine virus was not able to protect chickens against the adverse effects of a challenge with the novel serotypes.

Detection of infectious bronchitis virus

“…Traditionally, strain classification into serotypes has been by VNTs performed in various systems, including embryonated eggs (Dawson & Gough, 1971;Cunningham, 1973;Cowen & Hitchner, 1975;Lohr, 1976Lohr, , 1977Gelb et al, 1981Gelb et al, , 1989Gelb et al, , 1991Davelaar et al, 1984;Picault et al, 1986;Karaca et al, 1990;Cubillos et al, 1991;Capua et al, 1998), cell culture (Hopkins, 1974;Cowen & Hitchner, 1975;Wadey & Faragher, 1981;Csermelyi et al, 1988), or TOCs (Johnson & Marquardt, 1975;Darbyshire et al, 1979;Cook, 1984;Cook et al, 1987Cook et al, , 1999Hinze et al, 1991;Ignjatovic & McWaters, 1991;Cubillos et al, 1991;Parsons et al, 1992;Dhinakar Raj & Jones, 1996b;Ignjatovic & Ashton, 1996;Wang et al, 1997). There are several reports on serotyping by the HI test (Lashgari & Newman, 1984;Brown & Bracewell, 1985;Toro et al, 1987;Cook et al, 1987;Capua et al, 1998Capua et al, , 1999.…”

Universal oligonucleotides for the detection of infectious bronchitis virus by the polymerase chain reaction

“…Non-Massachusetts serotype isolates from the UK in the late 1960s were; UK/183/66, UK/860/86, UK/225/67, UK/551/67, UK/591/67, UK/604/67, UK/ 690/67 and UK/918/67 (Dawson & Gough, 1971;Cavanagh & Davis, 1992 (Davelaar et al, 1984] Cook, 1984Cook & Huggins, 1986;Cavanagh et al, 1992b). Other isolates from western Europe during this period were; NL/D1466/79 (Davelaar et al, 1984), UK/200/83 (Cook, 1984), UK/62/83 (Cook & Huggins, 1986), and France/PL84084/86 (Picault et al, 1986).…”

Isolation, characterisation and preliminary cross‐protection studies with a new pathogenic avian infectious bronchitis virus (Strain PL‐84084)

“…As more field cases are systematically investigated, IB variant serotypes are being increasingly isolated. During our research into variant IB viruses in France, strain PL-84084 was the first to be isolated but probably is not the only one present as the IB situation in European countries probably does not differ greatly from that described by Davelaar et al (1981Davelaar et al ( , 1983Davelaar et al ( , 1984 in the Netherlands, and Cook (1984) in Great Britain. It is interesting to observe that in PL-84084 field outbreaks, recently infected flocks had no PL-84084 neutralising antibodies.…”

“…The economic importance of these viruses is difficult to assess without carrying out a large-scale study. Such a study was done by Davelaar et al (1981Davelaar et al ( , 1983Davelaar et al ( , 1984 and led to the isolation and characterisation of several pathogenic IB variant viruses (IBW) in the Netherlands. Their findings encouraged us to carry out a serological survey in French poultry farms, by using four Dutch IBW as antigens.…”