A study conducted by the Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom identified chickens that carried avian influenza but were genetically resistant to the disease and only shed the virus through their respiratory tract for a limited time period. The Pirbright Institute is a leading bioscience center in research and surveillance of virus diseases of livestock and viruses that spread from animals to humans. The findings of the study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The researchers found that birds shedding the virus through their respiratory tract was the only relevant means of spreading the virus and that resistant birds were therefor completely unable to initiate or sustain a chain of infection. These results suggest that this could be because of a genetic restriction within the bird that stops the virus spreading when inside the body. Birds that were susceptible to the disease shed the virus over a longer period of time.
Dr. Colin Butter, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln, who was involved in the research, said that the results of the study were significant. “Until now we knew relatively little about how a bird’s genetics can affect its reaction to flu viruses, but this new research, which for the first time shows that some poultry lines are genetically resistant to avian flue, represents a significant step forward,” Butter said.
“The prospect of breeding birds with natural immunity to influenza virus would certainly widen the scope of existing control measures and perhaps limit the risk to the human population of the emergence of pandemic viruses,” Dr. Butter said.
Further studies are planned to discover and examine the precise biological mechanisms behind genetic resistance in birds, which could have major implications for poultry breeding as well as human flu treatment in the future.
