Effect of TMUV on immune organs of TMUV infected ducklings

Tembusu Virus (TMUV), a pathogenic member of Flavivirus family, acts as the causative agent of egg-laying and has severely threatened the duck industry over the past few years. Thus far, the pathogenicity of such virus has been extensively studied, whereas TMUV on immune system has been less comprehensively assessed, especially on ducklings that exhibit more susceptible to TMUV attack. Accordingly, in the present study, 5-day-old ducklings were infected with TMUV-TC2B (104 TCID50) via intravenous injection, and mock ones were inoculated with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) in identical manner as control. At 1 day-post inoculation (dpi), the innate immunity was strongly activated, and reacted rapidly to TMUV invasion, which was reflected as the significantly up-regulated IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs), especially in immune organs (e.g., thymus, bursa of Fabricius (BF) and spleen). Subsequently, under the continuous monitoring, the levels of IgA, IgM and IgG acting as the representative immunoglobulins (Igs) were constantly higher than those of mock ducklings, demonstrating that humoral immunity also played a major role in anti-virus infection. Despite the immune system activated positively, TMUV still caused systemic infection, and in particular, the immune organs were subject to severe damage in the early infection. With our constant observation, the injury of spleen and BF turned out to be getting more serious, and at 6 dpi, TMUV antigen was widely detected in both of two immune organs by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and main histopathological lesion presented as lymphocytopenia. Moreover, the elevated apoptosis rate of splenic lymphocytes and the alteration of immune organ index also revealed the damage of lymphoid organs and similarly, it is worth noting that severe damages were detected in thymus of TMUV-infected ducklings as well. In brief, the present study systematically described the dynamic damage of immune system after being attacked by TMUV and presented insights into the research of pathogenicity.