Abstract
Avian Tumour Virus and 'Carrier' Hens IT is stated that losses in poultry flocks due to neoplastic diseases amount to 20 per cent or more, and despite the urgency of the problem of etiology and control of avian cancer, there is little information which can be used as a basis for prevention. Although it is not known whether all spontaneous tumours are virus-induced, most of the successfully transplanted sarcomas were found to be associated with a causative virus. Susceptibility to Rous No. 1 filterable sarcoma is inherited, and resistant birds frequently respond to infection by this virus by the production of no growth or by a small and transient growth. The virus remains latent in these birds for years after clinical recovery from the infection. Fowl-tumour viruses are disseminated about the body of a host bearing a freshly induced filterable tumour and, although such fowls have only a brief reproductive period left, the virus passes to the egg and hence to the offspring of the tumour-host. The laying capacity of the 'carrier' fowls, on the other hand, appears not to be affected, and it would be expected that their immunity would be passed similarly to their eggs. In attempting to find whether these virus 'carriers' might be responsible for the spread of malignant diseases in such flocks, J. G. Carr (Proc. Boy. Soc. Edin., 52, B, 54; 1944) has investigated the neutralizing ability of the eggs of the 'carriers' and of normal hens, and has found that 'carriers' lay eggs which contain a considerable amount of virus-neutralizing antibody in the yolk. Virus could not be detected in the egg-embryo or chick from such birds, nor did the 'carriers' infect other birds in the same pen with the sarcoma virus. The fact that no neoplasms developed in a flock which, by careful husbandry, had been raised free from parasites or infectious diseases, suggests the elimination of some factor operating in ordinary flocks.
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Research Items. Nature 155, 518–519 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155518a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155518a0