Abstract
Bovine Neonatal Pancytopenia (BNP), a fatal bleeding syndrome of neonatal calves, is caused by maternal alloantibodies absorbed from colostrum and is characterized by lymphocytopenia, thrombocytopenia and bone marrow hypoplasia. An inactivated viral vaccine is the likely source of alloantigens inducing BNP-associated alloantibodies in the dam. In this study the specificity of BNP alloantibodies was assessed and was linked to the pathology of BNP. We demonstrated that Major Histocompatibility Complex class I (MHC I) and Very Late Antigen-3, an integrin α3/β1 heterodimer, were the major targets of BNP alloantibodies. However, alloantibody binding to various bovine cell types correlated with MHC I expression, rather than integrin β1 or α3 expression. Likewise, alloantibody-dependent complement-mediated cell lysis correlated strongly with MHC I expression. Examination of several tissues of third trimester bovine foetuses revealed that cells, shown to be affected in calves with BNP, were characterized by high MHC class I expression and high levels of alloantibody binding. We conclude that in spite of the heterogeneous specificity of BNP associated maternal alloantibodies, MHC I-specific antibodies mediate the pathogenicity of BNP in the calf and that cells with high MHC I expression were preferentially affected in BNP.