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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Infectious Diseases
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1555604
Transmission investigation of Mycoplasma synoviae in Chinese indigenous chickens
Provisionally accepted
Liping Yin1Yan Luo1Changming Li1Li Wang1Hanjie Yin1Qiang Zhou1Shutao Cui1Moru Xu2Haitao Zhang1
Aijian Qin2*- 1Jiangsu Lihua Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd, Changzhou, China
- 2Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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To investigate the epidemiological characteristics of Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) in Chinese indigenous chickens, a comprehensive study was conducted on chicken flocks from three breeder farms in Jiangsu, China. A total of 113 batches of chicken flocks were screened using real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Among 3,284 choanal cleft swab samples collected from chickens aged 2 to over 25 weeks, 1,695 tested positive for MS. Notably, the MS-positive rate increased significantly in chickens aged 8 to 25 weeks. Interestingly, none of the chicken embryo samples (0/322) and only two one-day-old chickens (2/927) tested positive for MS infection. In contrast, Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) infection was more prevalent, particularly in unhatched embryos (158/294), primarily due to air sac contamination. All offspring from MS-positive parent flocks aged 27 to 38 weeks tested negative for MS. To further explore the influence of the breeding environment, chickens from the same batch were raised either in breeder farms or isolators for 17 weeks. Chickens housed in breeder farms exhibited MS nucleic acid and antibody positivity from 9 to 17 weeks, whereas those raised in isolators remained MS-free throughout the study. These findings indicate that vertical transmission of MS in Chinese indigenous chickens is rare, with horizontal transmission being the predominant mode of spread.
Keywords: Chinese indigenous chickens, Mycoplasma synoviae, Vertical transmission, egg production, horizontal transmission
Received: 05 Jan 2025; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yin, Luo, Li, Wang, Yin, Zhou, Cui, Xu, Zhang and Qin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aijian Qin, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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