The Immune Response to a Ten-Times Oral or Intramuscular Immunisation With Lawsonia Vaccine in Weaner Pigs

摘要

Proliferative enteropathy (PE) is an important economic disease of pigs, and is caused by the intracellular Gram-negative bacterium Lawsonia intracellularis. PE affects pigs of all ages, causing haemorrhagic enteropathy and death in the acute form orweight loss and diarrhoea in the chronic form. Clinical signs of PE can be controlled with a live oral commercial vaccine (Enterisol* Ileitis, Boehringer Ingelheim Pty Ltd, North Ryde, NSW; Kroll et al., 2004) and a L.intracelluLaris bacterin vaccine administered intramuscularly (Dale et al., 1997). This research ultimately aims to identify an immune marker for protection against PE following vaccination to ensure life-long immunity to PE. This pilot experiment compared the systemic and mucosal immune responses to a ten times (lOx) dose of the Enterisol* Ileitis vaccine given orally or intramuscularly (IM), as previous studies indicated that serum antibodies were not detected following a single vaccine dose (105'5TCID50 L. intracellularis-, Kroll et al., 2004).