The Swine Health Information is exploring the epidemiology of a bacterial infection that has resulted in the sudden deaths of pigs in Canada and the United States. The confirmation of swine losses resulting from Streptococcus zooepidemicus has prompted the Swine Health Information Center to initiate an effort to categorize the bacteria.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says early sequencing shows it's almost identical to a pathogen that caused high mortality in the 1970's in China.
Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
We got reports of this bacteria causing problems in Canada, in Manitoba, in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Tennessee and maybe even in North Carolina all within a relatively short period of time. It looks like this is an incident where those places are linked together by movement of pigs and most probably a susceptible population that just keeps moving this bacteria from one group to another.
Those places have been cleaned, they've been disinfected. We're trying to learn more about the bacteria itself understanding its pathogenicity. We're going to expose weaned pigs and follow that infection through those weaned pigs so we can understand more about how it enters the pig and how it causes the problems that it causes.
We're also going to do some very extensive genome sequencing so we can make sure that we identify the areas of the bacteria that are especially pathogenic and also understand the genomics behind it because we think that might give us some clues about being able to manage it, being able to prevent it in the future.
Source : Farmscape