Pathogenesis of infectious bronchitis virus with different routes of inoculation and the effect of in vivo serial passage in nephropathogenicity using cloacal infection

In this study, we wanted to determine if the respirotropic JMK strain of infectious bronchitis virus(IBV), which has a spike glycoprotein gene that is 99% similar to the nephropathogenic Gray strain of IBV, could adapt and cause lesions in the kidney following intracloacal passage in chickens. Two day old specific pathogen free(SPF) cchickens were infected with Gray and JMK strains by the intraocular and cloacal route. Several tissue samples were collected at various times. Viruses were recovered from more tissues and earlier in the infection from chickens infected cloacally than chickens infected intraocularly. Virus was isolated from the kidney of chickens infected with Gray by the intraocular route and JMK by the intracloacal route, but not from chicken given JMK the intraocular route. Histopathologically, interstitial nephritis was observed in Gray infected chickens. However, viral RNA or antigen were not detected in the kidney by in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. We further passaged the JMK strain ten times in two day old SPF chickens using cloacal inoculation. We examined the virus titer and histopathological change in the kidney at each passage level. The amount of virus recovered from the kidney was stable throughout this serial passage and the passaged virus did not caused renal damage. Further, virus could not be isolated from the kidney when chickens were infected with the passaged virus by the intraocular route. We conclude that the JMK strain has a strict upper respiratory tract tropism since cloacal passage did not produce nephrotropism or nephropathogenicity.