Virulence of South African isolates of Haemophilus paragallinarum. Part 2: naturally occurring NAD-independent field isolates.

Naturally occurring NAD-independent variants of Haemophilus paragallinarum, which have been isolates from poultry showing clinical signs of infectious coryza, were used to determine their virulence using a newly developed challenge model for infectious coryza. It was established that the NAD-independent isolates belonging to a particular serogroup, were less virulent when compared to the virulence of the NAD-dependent isolates from the same serogroup. It was shown that the virulence of the NAD-independent isolates belonging to serogroup C and serogroup A were very similar to each other. This differs to the results obtained with NAD-dependent isolates reported on previously, in which the serogroup C isolates were found to be more virulent then the serogroup A isolates.