Infectious Bronchitis

Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV) is a clinically acute, highly contagious viral disease affecting chickens of all ages. IBV has an incubation period of only 24 to 72 hours.

Symptoms:

• The disease affects the respiratory and urogenital tract of birds resulting in respiratory distress, sneezing, rattling and . lesions in the trachea.
• In laying birds, a drop in egg production, misshaped eggs with low quality. Some strains of the virus may cause severe kidney damage.
• Mortality may be as high as 100%.

Diagnosis:

Antibodies to avian viruses in serum can be detected by the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay (ELISA). The levels of IBV antibodies in serum, as well as the immune status of entire flocks can be monitored using ELISA. About the ELISA Inactivated antigen is bound to a microwell. Diluted sera is added to the microwell and incubated. Any anti-IBV antibodies present in the serum will bind to the IBV on the microwell forming an IBV antigen-antibody complex. After washing away any unbound material, anti-Chicken IgG Alkaline Phosphatase conjugate is added to the microwell. The conjugate will bind to the IBV antigen-antibody complex. After incubation any unbound conjugate is removed by washing. Enzyme substrate is then added to the microwell. The substrate reacts with any Alkaline Phosphatase present and forms a yellow product. In the final step the reaction is stopped, fixing the color. The intensity of the color is measured photometrically at 405 – 410 nm.

Control:

Vaccination.

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Relevant Web Resources:

Avian Infectious Bronchitis Virus (Research School of Biological Sciences) … www.afn.org – Infectious bronchitis (IB) within a poultry operation … Newcastle and Infectious Bronchitis Vaccine Reactions in Commercial Broilers 1 G. D. Butcher, DVM, Ph.D., R. D. Miles, Ph.D., and A. H. Nilipour2 … www.bio.davidson.edu – Spike Orthologs: Avian Infectious Bronchitis Coronavirus Spike Protein … www.scielo.br – Infectious bronchitis virus: detection and vaccine Strain differentiation by semi-nested RT-PCR … pubmedcentral – Coronavirus proteins: biogenesis of avian infectious bronchitis virus virion proteins. D F Stern and B M Sefton

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Information contained on this website is provided as general reference only. For application to specific circumstances, professional advice should be sought.

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