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’s Science Page showcases researchers Tatiana Petukhova, Maria Spinato, Tanya Rossi, Michele T. Guerin, Cathy A. Bauman, Pauline Nelson-Smikle, Davor Ojkic, and Zvonimir Poljak from the Unversity of Guelph’s real-time visualization of PRRS trends in Ontario from 2014 to 2023.
Key Points
- The PRRSV dashboard story included seven distinct pages, summarizing PRRSV data obtained from Ontario swine herds, tested using different PCR tests and molecular typing methods in the period between January 2014 and July 2023.
- Eighty different PRRSV RFLP patterns were identified.
- Observed trends of submissions were changed when time series were stratified by reasons for submission and production class.
Introduction
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is a prevalent pathogen that impacts the health of swine and is costly to the swine industry. Displaying PRRSV monitoring data in near-real time can serve as an information source to provide insight into longer-term trends. This study describes the development of interactive and near real-time dashboards to display PRRSV data submitted from Ontario (Canada) swine herds to the Animal Health Laboratory (AHL), University of Guelph.
Material & Methods
PRRSV test results were obtained from the University of Guelph’s Animal Health Laboratory database to develop interactive, real-time dashboards and to monitor and investigate PRRSV data. The test results from Ontario swine herd samples submitted from January 2014 to July 2023 were processed in R v.4.1.1. The final optimized, aggregated, and anonymized datasets were exported to the Tableau server and were used to design dynamic real-time visualizations with Tableau Desktop v.2021.4.
Results
Constructed dashboards were: (1) monthly number of submissions and positive submissions over the last 10 years; (2) number of submissions and positive submissions over the last 3 years, interactively displayed at weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals; (3) monthly number of PRRSV genotypes represented by the restriction fragment length polymorphism pattern (RFLP) types at the submission level over the last 5 years; (4) weekly number of tested farms and positive farms over the last 6 years; (5) monthly number of tested farms and positive farms over the last 6 years; (6) indicators of the epidemiological data quality in each month, represented by availability of demographic data and presence of premises identification; and (7) contextual information.
Eighty different PRRSV RFLP patterns were identified (Figure 1). Most farms contributed one submission per week or per month for PRRSV testing. However, maximum number of submissions per week and month was 13 and 31, respectively, warranting the display of data at both the submission and the farm levels. Epidemiological data quality showed considerable improvements over the 9 years of investigation. Apparent changes in trends of submissions were visually observed when time series were stratified by reasons for submission and production class.
Read the Full Paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2025.1528422/full