Systemic Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccination in Cattle Promotes Specific Antibody-Secreting Cells at the Respiratory Tract and Triggers Local Anamnestic Responses upon Aerosol Infection

Abstract

Over recent decades, world animal health organizations as well as national sanitary authorities have supported the use of vaccination as an essential component of the official FMD control programs in both endemic and disease-free settings. Very few works studied the local immunity induced by FMD vaccines at the respiratory mucosa, and local responses induced in vaccinated animals after aerosol infection have not been described yet. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time that systemic FMD vaccination (i) induced the early presence of active antigen-specific ASC along the respiratory tract and (ii) prompted a rapid local antibody response in the respiratory mucosa, triggered upon oronasal challenge and congruent with a memory B-cell response. This information may help to understand novel aspects of protective responses induced by current FMD vaccines as well as to provide alternative parameters to establish protection efficiency for new vaccine developments.