The Clinical Response of Gnotobiotic Calves, Pigs and Lambs to Inoculation With Human, Calf, Pig and Foal Rotavirus Isolates

Abstract

Summary. The infectivity, pathogenicity and immunogenicity of 5 human, 6 calf, 2 pig and 2 foal rotavirus isolates were studied in gnotobiotic calves, piglets and lambs. Three of the human isolates produced subclinical infection in newborn gnotobiotic piglets and the piglets developed neutralising antirotavirus antibody. When challenged with pig rotavirus 2 weeks later, the piglets did not develop diarrhoea, but rotavirus was detected in the faeces. In contrast, piglets inoculated with the other 2 human isolates failed to show evidence of infection and there was no specific antibody detected. These piglets developed diarrhoea when challenged 2 weeks later with pig rotavirus. The 4 human isolates failed to infect gnotobiotic calves and lambs.Two foal rotavirus isolates produced subclinical infection in piglets, but the subsequent protection against a challenge with pig rotavirus lasted less than 15 days. The foal rotavirus isolates failed to infect gnotobiotic calves and lambs.Two ofthe calf rotavirus isolates were extremely pathogenic to newborn pigs. Two other calf isolates infected newborn lambs, one of which developed mild diarrhoea.Ofthe 2 pig rotavirus isolates one induced a subclinical infection in newborn lambs but neither infected calves.These experiments suggest that cross-infection between species is not a property shared by all rotaviruses.

Avirulent Rotavirus Infections Protect Calves from Disease with and without Inducing High Levels of Neutralizing Antibody

“…Cross-protection between rotaviruses has been studied with isolates from different animal species (Woode et al, 1978;Wyatt et al, 1979;Tzipori et al, 1980;Gaul et al, 1982;Zissis et al, 1983) and between rotaviruses from the same animal species, in calves (Woode et al, 1978(Woode et al, , 1983Murakami et al, 1986) and in pigs (Bohl et aL, 1984). In some of these studies, cross-protection occurred but in others it did not.…”

Infection in piglets with a porcine rotavirus-like virus. Experimental inoculation and ultrastructural examination

“…Until 1980 all known rotavirus isolates from all species cross-reacted in serological techniques i.e. immunofluorescence, counter-current immunoeleetrophoresis, complement-fixation technique, radioimmuno-assay and ELISA (10,13,31,35), in spite of the variations in the rotaviruses from species to species and the type variations within the species (11,12,15,17,29,30,36).…”

Antigenic and Pathogenic Relationships of Three Bovine Rotaviruses and a Porcine Rotavirus

“…High levels of neutralizing and protective antibody to porcine rotavirus were detected in bovine colostrum (Bridger & Brown, 1981) and this, together with the observation that bovine rotaviruses may be pathogenic for piglets Tzipori et al, 1980), indicated the need to examine the relationships between rotaviruses from cattle and pigs. Preliminary observations with three bovine viruses suggested they were antigenically heterogeneous and their relationships to each other were examined first followed by their antigenic relationships to a porcine rotavirus.…”