Protective efficacy of stockpiled vaccine against H5N8 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus isolated from a chicken in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, in 2014.

H5 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses have spread worldwide, and antigenic variants of different clades have been selected. In this study, the national stockpiled vaccine prepared from A/duck/Hokkaido/Vac-1/2004 (H5N1) strain was evaluated for the protective efficacy against H5N8 HPAI virus isolated in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, in April 2014. In the challenge test, all of the vaccinated chickens survived without showing any clinical signs and reduced virus shedding.

Bovine whole-blood culture as a tool for the measurement of endotoxin activities in Gram-negative bacterial vaccines.

In order to analyze bovine immune reactions against the Gram-negative bacterial vaccine, bovine whole-blood culture was used to investigate the pro-inflammatory cytokine responses stimulated with lipopolysaccharides (LPS) extracted from Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. We also examined the interaction between LPS and aluminum hydroxide gel for endotoxin activity and pro-inflammatory cytokine responses of whole bovine blood. Alteration in the mRNA concentrations of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-10 in whole-blood culture at 4h after stimulation with different doses of LPS was observed and determined by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).