ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1627631
This article is part of the Research TopicEpidemiology and Control of Emerging/Re-emerging Poultry and Waterfowl DiseasesView all articles
Immune-Iron Homeostasis Deciphers Resistance Divergence to Riemerella anatipestifer in Ducks
Provisionally accepted
Mengyun ZouXiaolan Xiong
Weihong ZhangYue WeiWeiguo TangQipeng Wei
Cong HuangZhaofeng KangJinfang Xie
Jiangnan Huang*- Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Nanchang, China
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Riemerella anatipestifer (RA) causes substantial economic losses in global waterfowl production.This study compared immune responses and iron metabolism of ducks against RA infection between commercial White Kaiya ducks (WK) and native Ji'an Red-feathered ducks (JR), and between resistant (R) and susceptible (S) individuals within each breed. Results revealed JR ducks exhibited lower morbidity (85.63% vs. 100%) and mortality (68.75% vs. 88.76%) than WK ducks under identical infection conditions.Susceptible individuals in both breeds showed severe weight loss, splenomegaly, and multiorgan histopathological damage. Conversely, phenotype-specific resilience differed by breed: R-JR ducks maintained stable body weight, normal spleen indices, and minimal lesions versus weight loss, splenomegaly, and pathological persistence in R-WK ducks. Furthermore, S-JR ducks exhibited elevated tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) with down-regulated IgA, interferonγ (IFN-γ ), interleukin-22 (IL-22), IL-4, and IL-10 whereas R-JR ducks maintained stable IgA/Th1/Th2 cytokines with elevated IL-17A. In contrast, S-WK ducks exhibited elevated IgM/IgG/TNF-α with static IgA levels, and decreased IL-17A,while R-WK ducks showed lower IgM with stable IgG/Th1/Th2/Th17 levelS relative to S-WK ducks. Furthermore, pathological iron accumulation occurred in all infected WK ducks but not resistant JR ducks. Collectively, these breedspecific differentials highlight JR ducks' coordinated immune-iron homeostasis versus WK ducks' cytokine and iron dysregulation, providing insights for disease-resistant breeding strategies.
Keywords: Duck, Riemerella anatipestifer, Disease Resistance, immune response, iron metabolism
Received: 13 May 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zou, Xiong, Zhang, Wei, Tang, Wei, Huang, Kang, Xie and Huang. 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: Jiangnan Huang, Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Nanchang, China
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