
FARK.com: (7215679) Chicken vaccines combine to produce new mutant virus. Keep inoculating that chicken guys
Research from the University of Melbourne has shown that two different vaccine viruses- used simultaneously to control the same condition in chickens- have combined to produce new infectious viruses, prompting early response from Australia's veterinary medicines regulator. The vaccines were used to control infectious laryngotracheitis (ILT), an acute respiratory disease occurring in chickens worldwide. ILT can have up to 20% mortality rate in some flocks and has a significant economic and welfare impact in the poultry industry.
The research found that when two different ILT vaccine strains were used in the same populations, they combined into two new strains (a process known as recombination), resulting in disease outbreaks.
Neither the ILT virus or the new strains can be transmitted to humans or other animals, and do not pose a food safety risk.
The study was led by Dr Joanne Devlin, Professor Glenn Browning and Dr Sang-Won Lee and colleagues at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Animal Health at the University of Melbourne and NICTA's Victoria Research Laboratory and is published July 13, 2012] in the journal Science.
Dr Devlin said the combining of live vaccine virus strains outside of the laboratory was previously thought to be highly unlikely, but this study shows that it is possible and has led to disease outbreaks in poultry flocks.
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Veterinary vaccines found to combine into new viruses, prompting regulatory response | e! Science News