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Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle

BACKGROUND: In 2011, the teratogenic, insect-transmitted Schmallenberg virus (SBV) emerged at the German/Dutch border region and subsequently spread rapidly throughout the European continent. In cattle, one of the major target species of SBV, first antibodies are detectable between one and three wee...

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Autores principales: Wernike, Kerstin, Holsteg, Mark, Szillat, Kevin P., Beer, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6258403/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30477532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-018-1702-y
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author Wernike, Kerstin
Holsteg, Mark
Szillat, Kevin P.
Beer, Martin
author_facet Wernike, Kerstin
Holsteg, Mark
Szillat, Kevin P.
Beer, Martin
author_sort Wernike, Kerstin
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In 2011, the teratogenic, insect-transmitted Schmallenberg virus (SBV) emerged at the German/Dutch border region and subsequently spread rapidly throughout the European continent. In cattle, one of the major target species of SBV, first antibodies are detectable between one and three weeks after infection, but the duration of humoral immunity is unknown. To assess the course of immunity in individual animals and the development of the within-herd seroprevalence, cattle kept in a German farm with a herd size of about 300 lactating animals were annually blood sampled between December 2011 and December 2017 and tested for the presence of SBV-specific antibodies. RESULTS: During the monitored period, the within-herd seroprevalence declined from 74.92% in 2011 to 39.93% in 2015 and, thereafter, slightly increased to 49.53% in 2016 and 48.44% in 2017. From the animals that were tested in 2014 and 2015 for the first time (between 24 and 35 months of age) only 14.77% and 7.45%, respectively, scored positive. Thereafter, the seropositivity rate of this age group rose markedly to 58.04% in 2016 and 48.10% in 2017 indicating a circulation of SBV. Twenty-three individual animals were consistently sampled once per year between 2011 and 2017 after the respective insect vector season, 17 of them tested positive at the first sampling. Fourteen animals were still seropositive in December 2017, while three cattle (17.65%) became seronegative. CONCLUSIONS: The regular re-emergence of SBV in Central Europe is a result of decreasing herd immunity caused by the replacement of animals by seronegative youngstock rather than of a drop of antibody levels in previously infected individual animals. The consequences of the overall decline in herd seroprevalence may be increasing virus circulation and more cases of fetal malformation caused by infection of naïve dams during gestation.
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spelling pubmed-62584032018-11-29 Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle Wernike, Kerstin Holsteg, Mark Szillat, Kevin P. Beer, Martin BMC Vet Res Research Article BACKGROUND: In 2011, the teratogenic, insect-transmitted Schmallenberg virus (SBV) emerged at the German/Dutch border region and subsequently spread rapidly throughout the European continent. In cattle, one of the major target species of SBV, first antibodies are detectable between one and three weeks after infection, but the duration of humoral immunity is unknown. To assess the course of immunity in individual animals and the development of the within-herd seroprevalence, cattle kept in a German farm with a herd size of about 300 lactating animals were annually blood sampled between December 2011 and December 2017 and tested for the presence of SBV-specific antibodies. RESULTS: During the monitored period, the within-herd seroprevalence declined from 74.92% in 2011 to 39.93% in 2015 and, thereafter, slightly increased to 49.53% in 2016 and 48.44% in 2017. From the animals that were tested in 2014 and 2015 for the first time (between 24 and 35 months of age) only 14.77% and 7.45%, respectively, scored positive. Thereafter, the seropositivity rate of this age group rose markedly to 58.04% in 2016 and 48.10% in 2017 indicating a circulation of SBV. Twenty-three individual animals were consistently sampled once per year between 2011 and 2017 after the respective insect vector season, 17 of them tested positive at the first sampling. Fourteen animals were still seropositive in December 2017, while three cattle (17.65%) became seronegative. CONCLUSIONS: The regular re-emergence of SBV in Central Europe is a result of decreasing herd immunity caused by the replacement of animals by seronegative youngstock rather than of a drop of antibody levels in previously infected individual animals. The consequences of the overall decline in herd seroprevalence may be increasing virus circulation and more cases of fetal malformation caused by infection of naïve dams during gestation. BioMed Central 2018-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6258403/ /pubmed/30477532 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-018-1702-y Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Wernike, Kerstin
Holsteg, Mark
Szillat, Kevin P.
Beer, Martin
Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title_full Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title_fullStr Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title_full_unstemmed Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title_short Development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against Schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
title_sort development of within-herd immunity and long-term persistence of antibodies against schmallenberg virus in naturally infected cattle
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6258403/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30477532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12917-018-1702-y
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