Prediction of highly pathogenic avian influenza vaccine efficacy in chickens by comparison of in vitro and in vivo data: A meta-analysis and systematic review.

Vaccines for avian influenza (AI) can protect poultry against disease, mortality, and virus transmission. Numerous factors, including: vaccine platform, immunogenicity, and relatedness to the field strain, are known to be important to achieving optimal AI vaccine efficacy. To better understand how these factors contribute to vaccine protection, a systematic meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate efficacy data for vaccines in chickens challenged with highly pathogenic (HP) AI.

Effects of the HN gene C-terminal extensions on the Newcastle disease virus virulence.

The hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) is a multifunctional protein that has receptor recognition, neuraminidase, and fusion promotion activities. Sequence analysis revealed that the HN gene of many extremely low virulence NDV strains encodes a larger open-reading frame (616 amino acids, aa) with additional 45 aa at its C-terminus when compared with that (571 aa) of virulent NDV strains. Therefore, it has been suspected that the 45 aa extension at the C-terminus of the HN may affect the NDV virulence.

A heterologous neuraminidase subtype strategy for the differentiation of infected and vaccinated animals (DIVA) for avian influenza virus using an alternative neuraminidase inhibition test.

The option of vaccinating poultry against avian influenza (AI) as a control tool is gaining greater acceptance by governments and the poultry industry worldwide. One disadvantage about vaccination with killed whole-virus vaccines is the resulting inability to use common serologic diagnostic tests for surveillance to identify infected flocks. There has been considerable effort to develop a reliable test for the differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA).

Generation and biological assessment of recombinant avian metapneumovirus subgroup C (aMPV-C) viruses containing different length of the G gene.

Genetic variation in length of the G gene among different avian metapneumovirus subgroup C (aMPV-C) isolates has been reported. However, its biological significance in virus replication, pathogenicity and immunity is unknown. In this study, we developed a reverse genetics system for aMPV-C and generated two Colorado (CO) strain-based recombinant viruses containing either the full-length G gene derived from a Canadian goose isolate or a C-terminally truncated G gene of the CO strain.