PRRS – Swine in Minnesota

Production losses from a recombinant PRRSv outbreak

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 bringing to you a summary from a publication by the SEGES Danish Pig Research Centre and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The study published in Porcine Health Management describes production losses associated with a recombinant PRRS strain in breeding herds.

Key Points

A new PRRS-1 recombinant between two vaccine strains variant was reported.
This variant was detected in a boar station and affected breeding and production herds.
Production losses associated with this variant in the production herds comprised a decrease in liveborns/litter and in weaned/litter, as well as an increase in stillborn/litter which was higher than observed in previous Danish PRRS outbreak reports.

Understanding PRRSv diversity at the pig and litter level

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, Dr. Mariana Kikuti from the MSHMP team is sharing results from a study using whole genome sequencing to assess PRRSv diversity within and across litters.

Key points

Viral diversity within the piglet population is generally small, but higher diversity was found in ORFs 4 and 5a.
Within animal consensus changes were observed in a period as short as 2 weeks, which means piglets might be going to the GF sites with different viruses than the ones identified closer to farrowing.

Dr. Igor Paploski in the top 10 UMN Research Day infographics

Dr. Igor Paploski, postdoctoral associate from the VanderWaal lab ranked in the top 10 infographics at the University of Minnesota Research Day for his latest research on transmission of swine infectious diseases.

Risk-based management of PRRS and PED

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.

Today, we are sharing the work of Dr. Kaushi Kanankege, post-doctoral associate in the VanderWaal lab.

Objective

We conducted a survey to determine swine industry perspectives on a) perceived importance of risk-modifying factors contributing to between-farm transmission of PRRS and PED, and b) prevention/mitigation measures that should be prioritized on a farm that was forecasted to be at high risk of breaking.

Link to the survey: https://umn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3C9lQKVjyCrA9cp

**We need more survey answers! Please click the link and participate in this 8-question short survey.

Detecting PRRS and influenza A viruses from swine farm air filters

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 new publication from Dr. Montse Torremorell’s lab investigating if RNA viruses such as PRRSv and influenza virus could be detected from used filters in commercial swine herds.

Key Points

Little is known about the type and nature of viruses that get trapped in commercial filters on swine farms due to a lack of sampling methods.
The first part of this study established effective methods for eluting and identifying PRRS and IAV viruses in MERV filters under lab conditions.
The second part of the study tested the verified method on used filters from swine farms, verifying the presence of both PRRS and IAV