Publications – Swine in Minnesota

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Viral Diversity within a Farrow-to-Wean Farm Cohort

Today we are sharing a recent publication from the MSHMP team in collaboration with the VanderWaal and Schroeder’s labs. The objective of the study was to assess the diversity of PRRS genomes within a cohort of naïve pigs undergoing a PRRS outbreak. The full paper is available online in open access.

Infection dynamics and incidence of wild-type PRRS virus in growing pigs

This new publication from the Torremorell’s lab is focusing on growing pig herds in the Midwest and how wild-type PRRS virus can spread among them. The full publication is available on the journal’s website.

Highlights

Wild-type PRRSV infections in growing pigs are common and more prevalent towards the middle to end of the growing phase.
Site-level surveillance is useful to understand PRRSV infections in vaccinated pigs.
Biosecurity practices in growing pig sites are key to prevent lateral infections.

Disentangling transport movement patterns of swine trucks

This is a recent publication from the MSHMP team regarding transport patterns within a Midwestern swine system. The full publication is available on the journal’s website.

Objectives

This project had the following objectives:

characterizing vehicle network before and during the COVID-19 pandemic,
Understanding vehicle movement: consistency of vehicle movements over time), and time spent at each site

Recent study pinpoints opportunities to better control swine flu

New research led by researchers at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) reveals that farmworkers vaccinating and weaning 3-week-old piglets can indirectly and significantly contribute to the spread of the influenza A virus (IAV) on swine farms. This information can help pig producers target biosecurity measures more strategically, curbing swine flu transmission and enhancing swine production outcomes.

Predicting Antigenic Distance from Genetic Data for PRRSV-Type 1

Today, we are sharing a new publication from the VanderWaal research lab at the UMN. In this article published in Microbiology Spectrum, Dr. Dennis Makau et al. estimated the likelihood of serum-virus cross-protection between PRRSV-1 viruses and identified important amino acid sites influencing antigenic variability between viruses. Additionally, they investigated how differences in those amino acid sites contributes to the antigenic variability between the viral isolates.

IMPORTANCE Understanding cross-protection between cocirculating PRRSV1 strains is crucial to reducing losses associated with PRRS outbreaks on farms. While experimental studies to determine cross-protection are instrumental, these in vivo studies are not always practical or timely for the many cocirculating and emerging PRRSV strains. In this study, we demonstrate the ability to rapidly estimate potential immunologic cross-reaction between different PRRSV1 strains in silico using sequence data routinely collected by production systems. These models can provide fast turn-around information crucial for improving PRRS management decisions such as selecting vaccines/live virus inoculation to be used on farms and assessing the risk of outbreaks by emerging strains on farms previously exposed to certain PRRSV strains and vaccine development among others.