Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 and Newcastle disease viral infections cause severe illness in chickens and vaccination is a strategic tool of controlling these diseases. Hence, this study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of using both recombinant herpesvirus of turkey (rHVT-H5 and rHVT-F) vector vaccines at day-old, in the hatchery, under field conditions. Vaccinated chickens were...

Virulent, avirulent, and attenuated hybrid strains of Shigella flexneri 2a are equally susceptible to phagocytosis by cultured mouse peritoneal macrophages. The virulent strain is highly lethal for the macrophages, whereas the avirulent is not and is killed. The attenuated hybrid strain is intermediate in its lethality. Comparable results were obtained by using virulent and avirulent S. flexner...

Cryptococcosis is mainly caused by Cryptococcus neoformans. However, the number of cases due to C. gattii is increasing, affecting mainly immunocompetent hosts. C. gattii is divided into four major molecular types, VGI to VGIV, which differ in their host range, epidemiology, antifungal susceptibility and geographic distribution. Besides studies on the Vancouver Island outbreak strains, which sh...

Recently, the worldwide propagation of clonal CTX-M-15-producing Escherichia coli isolates, namely ST131 and O25b:H4, has been reported. Like the majority of extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli isolates, the pandemic clone ST131 belongs to phylogenetic group B2, and has recently been shown to be highly virulent in a mouse model, even though it lacks several genes encoding key virulence factors ...

Classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is transmitted via secretions and excretions of infected pigs. The efficiency and speed of the transmission depends on a multitude of parameters, like quantities of virus excreted by infected pigs. This study provides quantitative data on excretion of CSFV over time from pigs infected with a highly, moderately or low virulent strain. For each strain, five indi...

Streptococcus tigurinus was recently described as a novel species, and some strains are highly virulent. We detected S. tigurinus in infected tissue sampled by necropsy. In order to characterize and confirm the virulence of this species, whole-genome sequencing of the pure cultured bacterium was performed. We found that the strain has specific and unique genetic elements contained in highly vir...

A total of 738 strains of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) were examined in biological experiments on poultry by use of PCR methods with primers for detection of the insertion sequence IS901. Serotype strains of MAC from all known 28 serotypes were examined. Further strains were isolated from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative and HIV-positive patients, 6 animal species, 17 bird speci...

Haemophilus parasuis is a normal commensal of the upper respiratory tract of healthy pigs. However, in conjunction with stress and/or viral infections, or in immunocompromised animals, H. parasuis can transform into a pathogen causing Glasser's disease, which is typically characterized by fibrinous polyserositis, polyarthritis, meningitis, and sometimes acute pneumonia and septicemia. H. parasu...

Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae was isolated from tonsils of 63 (10.5%) of 600 apparently healthy slaughter pigs in the Kanto area of Japan in February and July 1984. The isolation rate was significantly higher during July than in February. Of these 63 isolates, 34 isolates (54.0%) were serotype 7, 20 isolates (31.7%) were serotype 2, 6 isolates (9.5%) were serotype 6, and 1 isolate (1.6%) each wa...

Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis viruses (TMEV) are separable into two groups based on their biological behavior: those highly virulent isolates which are unable to cause persistent infection and the less virulent isolates which regularly produce persistent central nervous system infection in mice. Two highly virulent and five less virulent TMEV were found to have the same buoyant density (1....