The role of intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes in resistance against coccidiosis in chickens

Abstract Coccidiosis is a critical enteric disease that costs more than $14.5 billion in annual cost to world poultry industry. It caused by different Eimeriaspecies invade and replicate within the intestinal epithelium site-specific manner. The Eimeriainfection induces local damage, reduces feed consumption, utilization, growth performance, increasing mortality rate. With recent antibiotic ban including anticoccidial drugs chicken production, live vaccination become widely used control coccidiosis. However, vaccines are expensive, require time circulate host induce protective immunity, process high-risk factor for necrotic enteritis clostridium perfringens. Therefore, there high demand development of safe, protective, inexpensive against coccidiosis which better understanding immune responses Eimeria parasites. aim this study elucidate role intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) during Eimeriainfection. At 3 week age, SPF white-leghorn chicks were divided into groups. Each group (n=50) was orally inoculated with 20,000 oocytes (E) acervuline or E. maxima, mock-inoculated PBS. 2 day post-infection (dpi), 7 dpi 14 dpi, frequency number small IEL populations determined flow cytometry. induced TCRγδ +, TCRβ TCR neg, +CD4 +CD8α +CD8αβ +CD8αα iCD8α IELs compared at dpi. no difference among groups More experiments underway determine effector function each subset IELs. Startup funding, OSU