Immunoreactivity and morphological changes of bursal follicles in chickens infected with vaccine or wild-type strains of the infectious bursal disease virus

Infectious bursal disease (IBD) is characterized by immunosuppression due to the depletion of lymphocytes in the atrophied bursa of Fabricius (BF). We have sometimes encountered contradictory findings: chickens infected with the vaccine IBD virus (IBDV) strain have sometimes exhibited a highly atrophied BF, but not immunosuppression. In this study, chickens administered vaccine or wildtype strains of IBDV were later vaccinated with the B1 strain of the Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Bursal changes were examined histologically with a focus on the bursal follicle. The immunoreactivity to NDV was also evaluated with the hemagglutination inhibition test. In gross examination, we observed a few chickens with a severely atrophied BF in vaccine strain-administered groups (vaccine groups), and the level of severity was the same as that in the wild-type strain-administered group (wild-type group). However, these chickens retained humoral antibody responses to NDV and were revealed to possess a higher number of bursal follicles than those of the wild-type group. These results indicated that macroscopic evaluation dose not accurately reflect the immunoreactivity and degree of bursal damage in IBDV-administered chickens. We also found non-immunosuppressed chickens in the wild-type group. These non-immunosuppressed chickens retained a significantly higher number of normal follicles and total follicles according to our statistical analysis. Furthermore, a high correlation coefficient between the NDV-HI titer and the number of normal follicles was found in the wild-type group. These results implied that the retained number of normal follicles is important for the immunoreactivity of chickens infected with IBDV.