This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.
Key points
- Using processing fluids as a diagnostic tool can help us to detect lower PRRS prevalence in the herd.
- Testicles and tails should be collected in a pail as they are potential spreaders of PRRS in the farrowing room.
- We should target young parity sows for PRRSV sampling.
What are processing fluids?
In sow farms, piglets get processed during the first week of life. This means that their tails is docked and the males are castrated. The farmer usually collect tails and testicles in a pail to be discarded at a later time.
We propose to use the fluids accumulating at the bottom of the pail to assess the farm PRRSV status.
How did we test those fluids?
The fluids were tested for PRRSV by PCR and the results were compared to the gold standard for this diagnostic: PCR on serum. Sampling was set in a farm that just went through a PRRSV outbreak and 10 litters from various parity sows were selected each week for 8 weeks.
What were the results?
Processing fluids were efficient in detecting PRRSV even if there was only one piglet positive in the litter (determined with the serum samples). Compared to the serum tests, there were 4 false negative samples that were explained by the fact that the virus load in the piglets serums was low and the dilution effect of the processing fluids caused the samples to get negative results. We also found 4 false positive resutls that could be due to cross-contamination of the samples despite the extreme care with which the samples were handled.
Are processing fluids a worthwhile sample?
The agreement between processing fluids and serum results was good and the sensitivity and specificity of the technique was respectively of 83% and 92%. Additionally, this technique requires no further handling of the piglets or use of extra supplies to collect samples and submit them to the laboratory.