Assessment of the cell-mediated immune response in chickens by detection of chicken interferon-γ in response to mitogen and recall Newcastle disease viral antigen stimulation

The potential of a capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) specific for chicken interferon-gamma (ChIFN-gamma) has been evaluated as a tool to assess cell-mediated immunity (CMI) in the chicken. In a first step, ChIFN-gamma production and cell proliferation of mitogen-activated chicken splenocytes have been compared. In general, for each of the stimulation conditions where significant proliferation was observed, production of ChIFN-gamma could be measured by ELISA. In our hands, the combination of ionomycin and phorbol-12-myristate 13-acetate or the use of recombinant chicken interleukin-2 gave the most satisfactory results. Then, the CMI response induced by live or killed Newcastle disease virus (NDV) vaccines has been evaluated sequentially by ex vivo antigen-specific ChIFN-gamma production and cell proliferation of splenocytes from immune chickens. The ex vivo data showed that both types of NDV vaccines are capable of stimulating CMI responses to NDV in chickens as measured by the ChIFN-gamma ELISA. However, most of the chickens vaccinated with the live vaccine produced ChIFN-gamma after antigen recall stimulation, from 2 to 4 weeks after vaccination, when only some chickens vaccinated with the inactivated vaccine showed a specific response 4 weeks after vaccination. No significant proliferative responses to either NDV vaccine were detectable during the 4 weeks of the study. From our results, it appears that antigen-specific ChIFN-gamma production can be used as a good indicator of actively acquired immunity to NDV and that the sensitivity range of the capture ELISA test is well adequate to measure ex vivo release of ChIFN-gamma.