February 2024 – Page 2 – Swine in Minnesota

Chasing a moving target

Rapid evolution, molecular surveillance of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus.

By Kim VanderWaal, Nakarin Pamornchainavakul, Cesar A. Corzo, Mariana Kikuti, Albert Rovira and Igor Paploski, University of Minnesota

When talking to practitioners, they will tell you that porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome control feels like a moving target. Despite ever-growing investments aimed at preventing between-farm spread, PRRS incidence at the national scale remains relatively steady year-over-year. However, underneath this apparent steady-state, epidemic-like spread events occur every few years with the emergence of novel genetic variants (Figure 1). For instance, the Lineage 1A 1-7-4 virus (blue line) emerged in ~2014 and rapidly spread throughout the country.

Survival of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) in the Environment

In this review paper published in Veterinary Sciences, Valeria Lugo, a student working with Drs. Corzo and Goyal at the University of Minnesota, discusses the current knowledge of PRRS survivability based on temperature and other environmental conditions. The publication is available in open access on the journal’s website.

Tracking between-farm PRRSV-2 transmission and its potential routes through the virus genetic relationship and farm-based data

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.

In this week’s Science Page University of Minnesota researchers Nakarin Pamornchainavakul, Dennis N. Makau, Igor A. D. Paploski, Cesar A. Corzo and Kimberly VanderWaal take a look at the spread of different variants of PRRS between farms.