Humoral immune response of the duck to duck hepatitis virus: virus-neutralizing vs. virus-precipitating antibodies.

Ducks were induced to develop high-level duck hepatitis virus (DHV)-neutralizing antibodies by inculation with a chicken-embryo-adapted DHV via subcutaneous, intramuscular, and intratracheal routes. Administration of the DHV orally in a gelatin capsule failed to stimulate immune response in the ducks. Contact controls of these ducks also remained negative for anti-DHV antibodies. These observations indicated that the DHV administered orally, in gelatin capsule, failed to infect the ducks. None of numerous duck anti-DHV immune sera, with virus-neutralizing activity in the range of 1.8 to 5.57 log10 median- embryo-infective-dose (EID50) neutralization index, developed precipitin lines against a variety of DHV preparations tested in low- and high-ionic-strength agar. The results suggest that the agar-gel immunodiffusion test is unsuitable for serologic testing of duck sera for anti-DHV antibody activity. Virus-neutralizing activity was revealed in both immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG classes of sera of actively immunized ducks. Immunodiffusion tests of Sephadex G-200 fractions of 1-day-old duckling sera with monospecific rabbit anti-duck IgM (DIgM) serum failed to detect DIgM. These results demonstrated that the IgM is not being transferred from the dam to the newly hatched ducklings. Seven- and 14-day-old ducks had DIgM in their sera. However, this IgM had no DHV-neutralizing activity, indicating that it was newly developed by the ducklings, which had no active DHV immune response, not having been exposed to DHV.