Volume 13, Number 10—October 2007
Dispatch
Super-Sentinel Chickens and Detection of Low-Pathogenicity Influenza Virus
Philip I. Marcus*
, Theodore Girshick†, Louis van der Heide*, and Margaret J. Sekellick*
, Theodore Girshick†, Louis van der Heide*, and Margaret J. Sekellick*Table 1
Seroconversion in influenza A virus–infected 3-week-old chickens given water or water + interferon*
| Infection type† | No. chickens |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Water | Water + interferon‡ | Total | |
| Overtly infected | 4/8§ | 8/8 | 16 |
| Sentinel | 2/32 | 31/31 | 63 |
| Combined | 6/40 | 39/39 | 79 |
*Represents 4 independent trials.
†Overtly infected birds were mixed with uninfected sentinel cage mates, the latter to become infected naturally.
‡Recombinant chicken interferon-α at 2,000 U/mL (5).
§No. positive birds/total no. receiving treatment, scored by agar gel precipitin or hemagglutination inhibition tests.
