Effect of emergency FMD vaccine antigen payload on protection, sub-clinical infection and persistence following direct contact challenge of cattle

Previous work, in sheep vaccinated with emergency foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine, indicated the benefit of increasing the antigen payload in inhibiting local virus replication and consequently persistence following an indirect aerosol challenge with a virus homologous to the vaccine strain. The work presented here investigates this possibility further using cattle and a more severe semi-heterologous direct contact challenge. The quantitative dynamics of virus replication and excretion in both vaccinated and non-vaccinated cattle following challenge are examined. Two experiments were carried out each involving 20 vaccinated and 5 non-vaccinated cattle. An O1 Manisa vaccine (18 PD50) was used for the first, previously reported experiment [Cox SJ, Voyce C, Parida S, Reid SM, Hamblin PA, Paton DJ, et al. Protection against direct contact challenge following emergency FMD vaccination of cattle and the effect on virus excretion from the oropharynx. Vaccine 2005;23:1106–13]. The same vaccine was used for the second experiment described in this paper except the antigen payload was increased 10-fold per bovine dose, resulting in significantly higher FMD virus neutralising antibody titres prior to challenge. Twenty-one days post-vaccination the cattle received a 5-day direct contact challenge with FMD virus from five further non-vaccinated cattle infected 24 h earlier with O UKG 34/2001. All vaccinated cattle regardless of antigen payload were protected against clinical disease. Sub-clinical oropharyngeal infection was detected in animals from both experiments but the level of virus replication shortly after direct contact challenge was significantly reduced in vaccinated animals. Cattle immunised with the 10-fold antigen payload cleared the virus more readily and consequently at 28 days post-challenge fewer animals were persistently infected compared to the single strength vaccine. Following a severe challenge, the results from both experiments show that use of emergency vaccine can prevent or decrease local virus replication and thereby dramatically reduce the amount of virus released into the environment, particularly during the early post-exposure period. Additionally, increasing the antigen payload of the vaccine may reduce sub-clinical infection, leading to fewer persistently infected virus carrier animals.