Rodrigo Gallardo (UC Davis) to appear on 2016 AAAP Annual Meeting

From August 6-9, the 2016 American Association of Avian Pathologists (AAAP) Annual Meeting will gather experts from around the world to discuss the most important topics in the industry and Rodrigo Gallardo will speak on a subject that will be treated at length during this event: Infectious Bronchitis Virus.

His conference "Major Histocompatibility Complex and Innate Immunity as Factors Providing Genetic Resistance to Infectious Bronchitis Virus", scheduled at 4:00 pm on August 9th, is the product of extensive research on this subject.

"IBV was detected 86 years ago and poultry producers are still dealing with its consequences globally disregarding vaccination. The strategy to tackle IBV should be coming up with a better vaccine technology and understand better the immune responses to IBV infections and vaccination. On that note we started investigating differences in resistance of genetic lines that possess the same genetic background and different MHC B haplotypes. The MHC has influence on the innate and adaptive immune response. This project started two years ago and we have been dedicated to determine which lines are resistant and susceptible to challenges to IBV strains", explains Gallardo (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Universidad de Chile and PhD in Poultry Molecular Virology from Auburn University).

"The idea by the end of this year is to start looking deeper in the immune responses of resistant and susceptible lines. We already have preliminary results backing up the importance of the innate response in the resistance of certain lines. This basic information will help strategize vaccination and the way in which vaccines can be improved", he added.

 

Gallardo will also tackle Avian Influenza at the San Antonio Convention Center. The assistant professor of the Department  of Population Health and Reproduction at UC Davis, who won the AAAP Arnold S. Rosenwald Student Poster Award in 2010, will present this year a poster entitled "Understanding New Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (AI) Viruses Affecting the U.S. Poultry Industry and their Persistence" and here is the abstract.

"We investigated the persistence of low (LP) and highly pathogenic (HP) avian influenza (AI) viruses in bedding material and feces obtained from different turkey, broiler and egg layer commercial productive units in California. Samples were collected at different times after spiking. Live HPAI (H5N8) virus particles persisted 96 hours in layer feces and 48 hours in broiler and turkey bedding. In contrast LPAI (H6N2) virus particles persisted only 12 hours after being spiked in all the different substrates.

In addition, we assessed the effectiveness of footbaths, using different disinfectants, as a tool to inactivate HPAI and LPAI on rubber boots. Quaternary ammonia and phenol + glutaraldehide based footbaths were not able to eliminate HPAI and LPAI live viral particles on boots, while a chlorine based granulated disinfectant was able to destroy the virus at contact.

These results demonstrated the potential of this HPAI isolate to persist for an extended time inside poultry premises. They also make clear that footbaths are only one piece of a biosecurity program and we cannot exclusively rely on them in the prevention of pathogen introduction into commercial flocks".