Affiliation:
1. Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Dipartimento di Sanità Alimentare ed Animale, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Vaccination against
Brucella
infections in animals is usually performed by administration of live attenuated smooth
B. abortus
strain S19 and
B. melitensis
strain Rev1. They are proven effective vaccines against
B. abortus
in cattle and against
B. melitensis
and
B. ovis
in sheep and goats, respectively. However, both vaccines have the main drawback of inducing O-polysaccharide-specific antibodies that interfere with serologic diagnosis of disease. In addition, they retain residual virulence, being a cause of abortion in pregnant animals and infection in humans. To overcome these problems, one approach is to develop defined rough mutant
Brucella
strains lacking O antigen of lipopolysaccharide.
B. abortus
rough strain RB51, a rifampin-resistant mutant of virulent strain
B. abortus
2308, is used as a vaccine against
B. abortus
infection in cattle in some countries. However, RB51 is not effective in sheep, and there is only preliminary evidence that it is effective in goats. In this study, we tested the efficacies of six rifampin-resistant rough strains of
B. melitensis
in protecting BALB/c mice exposed to
B. melitensis
infection. The protective properties, as well as both humoral and cellular immune responses, were assessed in comparison with those provided by
B. melitensis
Rev1 and
B. abortus
RB51 vaccines. The results indicated that these rough mutants were able to induce a very good level of protection against
B. melitensis
infection, similar to that provided by Rev1 and superior to that of RB51, without inducing antibodies to O antigen. In addition, all
B. melitensis
mutants were able to stimulate good production of gamma interferon. The characteristics of these strains encourage further evaluation of them as alternative vaccines to Rev1 in primary host species.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Immunology,Microbiology,Parasitology
Cited by
36 articles.
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