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.
This week, we are sharing a project from Dr. Andreia Arruda in collaboration with the MSHMP team regarding Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRSV) area spread for sow herd outbreaks in US swine dense regions.
Dr. Arruda has also been investigating PRRS seasonality in the US and how topography surrounding a farm influences outbreak risk.
Key points
- Strong evidence of area spread was not found after evaluating three farm clusters located in two swine dense regions.
- All barns of a nursery/finishing site should be sampled to define status.
- Sick pen might not be the best target when sampling for PRRSV in grower pig sites
Background and Objectives
Area spread refers to the transmission of a pathogen (here PRRSV) through small particles in the air as well as through fomites on which the pathogen would have deposited on.
The objective of the study was to determine if the virus detected in a recently infected sow farm was similar to the one detected in neighboring farms (in other words: was local spread a likely source of infection?)
Methods and Results
35 farms were monitored for PRRSV. As soon as a farm broke, all of the neighboring farms were sampled for PRRSV independently of the type of production on site. If a sick pen was present on the farm, effort was made to include it in the sampling. Positive samples were then sequenced to compare to the original virus from the outbreak.
For two of the three area spread assessments performed, no similar sequence to the one obtained from the farm under investigation was found. Also it was not always possible to detect PRRSV in sick pens of the growing pig sites sampled in our study.