umnswinenews

Frequency and origin of live imports of breeding-stock pigs to the United States

This week, we are sharing a report from the MSHMP team in collaboration with the Swine Health Information Center regarding the origin of the pigs that are imported for breeding purposes.

Key Points

International live pig transport is a possible route for disease entry into the U.S.
The first step in assessing this risk is to categorize and analyze breeding stock import data
Small numbers of imported breeding pigs have come from a variety of countries, but the majority come from Canada

PCR clamping for selectively sequencing wild-type PRRSV in vaccinated herds

This week, we are sharing a report by Harmon et al. from Iowa State University regarding PCR clamping. This project was funded by AAVLD Thermo Fisher Innovation Grant in Veterinary Diagnostic Medicine and ISU-VDL.

Key points

Conventional ORF5 sequencing may not differentiate between wild-type or vaccine-like.
Blocking the amplification of vaccine-like sequences it is possible to increase the likelihood of wild-type amplification.
Clamping allows the amplification of the wild-type with mixtures containing as little as 10% of a mixture with the vaccine-like.

Best of Leman 2018 series #10: A. Gomez – Swine gut microbiome studies, where are we at?

Our tenth presentation is from Dr. Andres Gomez, from the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural resource Sciences (CFANS) regarding the latest development in the swine gut microbiome studies.

How does giving tulathromycin at birth impact the fecal microbiota?

This week’s Science Page presents the second part of a project done by Zeineldin et al. from Dr. Jim Lowe’s program at the University of Illinois. The first part is available here.

Keypoints

Fluctuations in antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) associated with the developing gastrointestinal microbiota have not been elucidated
The swine fecal microbiota and their accompanying ARGs were diverse and established soon after birth
Results indicate that the perinatal TUL metaphylaxis has no measurable beneficial or detriment impacts on fecal microbiota structure and abundance of ARGs in pre-weaned piglets

Best practices to submit samples: new UMN VDL handouts available

If you are unsure about how to submit processing fluids or laryngeal swabs, the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory put together one-age illustrated handouts to guide you towards best practices for each commonly used sample type. Each one of them is available in a downloadable pdf format for convenience.

The handouts can be found on the VDL website.