Cell-mediated immune responses of lambs to challenge with bovine respiratory syncytial virus.

The lamb is a good model to study the pathogenesis and immune responses to infections with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) as lambs experimentally infected with bovine or human RSV may develop overt clinical disease. In the present study the development of cellular cytotoxic responses was studied in splenic, pulmonary and peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from lambs after primary and secondary infection with bovine RSV. Infection with bovine RSV was followed by the appearance of cytotoxic cells in the peripheral blood, the spleen and lung lavage fluids. These effector cells lysed virus-infected targets in a self-restricted manner. Depletion techniques revealed that cytotoxic activity was largely due to OvCD8+ cells. When effector cells obtained from primed lambs were stimulated with inactivated bovine RSV or with virus-infected cells in vitro, virus-specific cytotoxicity was significantly increased.