Journal
PLOS BIOLOGY
Volume 13, Issue 7, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198
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Funding
- Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health [R01GM105244]
- UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of NSF-NIH-USDA Ecology
- Evolution of Infectious Diseases program
- BBSRC [BB/K011057/1, BB/E003230/1, BB/E003540/2] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/E003230/1, BB/K011057/1, BB/E003540/2] Funding Source: researchfish
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Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. Here we show experimentally that immunization of chickens against Marek's disease virus enhances the fitness of more virulent strains, making it possible for hyperpathogenic strains to transmit. Immunity elicited by direct vaccination or by maternal vaccination prolongs host survival but does not prevent infection, viral replication or transmission, thus extending the infectious periods of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts.
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