Experimental Infection of Chickens with H5N8 High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Viruses Isolated in Japan in the Winter of 2020–2021

• Published in: Viruses
• Main Authors: Saki Sakuma, Taichiro Tanikawa, Ryota Tsunekuni, Junki Mine, Asuka Kumagai, Kohtaro Miyazawa, Yoshihiro Takadate, Yuko Uchida
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2023
• Subjects: avian flu; high pathogenicity avian influenza virus; Japan; infectivity; virulence; transmissibility; Microbiology; QR1-502; Avian flu
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/v15122293; https://doaj.org/article/d002da19bfc74a24904021491ab367f4

During the winter of 2020–2021, numerous outbreaks of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) were caused by viruses of the subtype H5N8 in poultry over a wide region in Japan. The virus can be divided into five genotypes—E1, E2, E3, E5, and E7. The major genotype responsible for the outbreaks was E3, followed by E2. To investigate the cause of these outbreaks, we experimentally infected chickens with five representative strains of each genotype. We found that the 50% chicken infectious dose differed by up to 75 times among the five strains, and the titer of the E3 strains (10 2.75 50% egg infectious dose (EID 50 )) was the lowest, followed by that of the E2 strains (10 3.50 EID 50 ). In viral transmission experiments, in addition to the E3 and E2 strains, the E5 strain was transmitted to naïve chickens with high efficiency (>80%), whereas the other strains had low efficiencies (<20%). We observed a clear difference in the virological characteristics among the five strains isolated in the same season. The higher infectivity of the E3 and E2 viruses in chickens may have caused the large number of HPAI outbreaks in Japan during this season.