Comparative innocuity and efficacy of live and inactivated sheeppox vaccines

BACKGROUND: Sheeppox (SPP) is one of the priorities, high-impact animal diseases in many developing countries, where live attenuated vaccines are routinely used against sheeppox virus (SPPV). In an event of an SPP outbreak, historically disease-free countries would hesitate to use of live vaccines against SPPVdue to the safety and trade reasons. Currently no killed SPPV vaccines are commercially available. In this study, we developed an inactivated Romanian SPPVvaccine and assessed its efficacy and potency in comparison with a live attenuated Romanian SPPV vaccine. Four naïve sheep were vaccinated once with the Romanian SPPV live attenuated vaccine and16 sheep were vaccinated twice with the inactivated vaccine. All sheep in the live vaccine group were included in the challenge trial, which was conducted using a highly virulent Moroccan SPPV field strain. Eight sheep of the inactivated vaccine group were challenged and the remaining sheep were monitored for seroconversion. Experimental animals were closely monitored for the appearance of clinical signs, body temperature and inflammation at the injection site. Two naïve sheep were used as unvaccinated controls. RESULTS: The inactivated Romanian SPPV vaccine was found to be safe and confer a good protection, similar to the live vaccine. Specific antibodies appeared from seven days post vaccination and remained up to nine months. CONCLUSION: This study showed that the developed inactivated Romanian SPPV vaccine has a potential to replace attenuated vaccine to control and prevent sheep pox in disease-free or endemic countries.