After vaccination, pigs experience much more severe disease when exposed to swine flu virus / Veterinary Pathology

As has been noted previously, vaccination is a black art, basically a trial and error process of discovery, which has the potential to either prevent or enhance disease, and therefore must be studied carefully before vaccines are administered to large populations, despite issues of expediency.  

Vet Pathol. 2012 Mar 28.

Kinetics of Lung Lesion Development and Pro-Inflammatory Cytokine Response in Pigs WithVaccine-Associated Enhanced Respiratory Disease Induced by Challenge With Pandemic (2009) A/H1N1 Influenza Virus.

Gauger PC, Vincent AL, Loving CL, Henningson JN, Lager KM, Janke BH, Kehrli ME Jr, Roth JA.

Abstract

The objective of this report was to characterize the enhanced clinical disease and lung lesions observed in pigs vaccinated with inactivated H1N2swine δ-cluster influenza A virus and challenged with pandemic 2009 A/H1N1 human influenza virus. Eighty-four, 6-week-old, cross-bred pigs were randomly allocated into 3 groups of 28 pigs to represent vaccinated/challenged (V/C), non-vaccinated/challenged (NV/C), and non-vaccinated/non-challenged (NV/NC) control groups. Pigs were intratracheally inoculated with pH1N1 and euthanized at 1, 2, 5, and 21 days post inoculation (dpi). Macroscopically, V/C pigs demonstrated greater percentages of pneumonia compared to NV/C pigs. Histologically, V/C pigs demonstrated severe bronchointerstitial pneumonia with necrotizing bronchiolitis accompanied by interlobular and alveolar edema and hemorrhage at 1 and 2 dpi. The magnitude of peribronchiolar lymphocytic cuffing was greater in V/C pigs by 5 dpi. Microscopic lung lesion scores were significantly higher in the V/C pigs at 2 and 5 dpi compared to NV/C and NV/NC pigs. Elevated TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 were detected in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid at all time points in V/C pigs compared to NV/C pigs. These data suggest H1 inactivated vaccines followed by heterologous challenge resulted in potentiated clinical signs and enhanced pulmonary lesions and correlated with an elevated proinflammatory cytokine response in the lung. The lung pathology and host immune response is consistent with the vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD) clinical outcome observed reproducibly in our swine model.