Abstract
Atypical porcine pestivirus (APPV) was first discovered in North America in 2015 and was later shown to be associated with congenital tremor (CT) in piglets. CT is an occasional challenge in some Danish sow herds. Therefore, we initiated an observational case control study to clarify a possible relationship between CT and APPV in Danish pig production. Blood samples were collected from piglets affected by CT (n = 55) in ten different sow herds and from healthy piglets in five sow herds without a history of CT piglets (n = 25), as well as one sow herd with a sporadic occurrence of CT (n = 5). APPV was detected by RT-qPCR in all samples from piglets affected by CT and in three out of five samples from piglets in the herd with a sporadic occurrence of CT. In the herds without a history of CT, only one out of 25 piglets were positive for APPV. In addition, farmers or veterinarians in CT-affected herds were asked about their experience of the issue. CT is most often seen in gilt litters, and a substantial increase in pre-weaning mortality is only observed in severe cases. According to our investigations, APPV is a common finding in piglets suffering from CT in Denmark.
Highlights
Atypical porcine pestivirus (APPV; species Pestivirus K) was first discovered in North America in 2015 using metagenomics [1], but it has been retrospectively detected in serum collected from fattening pigs in Switzerland in 1986 [2]
The study included a sample set of serum from 55 congenital tremor (CT)-affected piglets collected in ten case herds, 25 healthy piglets from five herds without a history of CT-affected piglets, and five piglets without CT from a herd categorized as an intermediate herd (Table 1 and Table S1)
APPV was detected in all 55 piglets (100%) suffering from CT in the case herds with Cq-values ranging from 20.0–36.7 (Table 1, Figure 1 and Table S1)
Summary
Atypical porcine pestivirus (APPV; species Pestivirus K) was first discovered in North America in 2015 using metagenomics [1], but it has been retrospectively detected in serum collected from fattening pigs in Switzerland in 1986 [2]. Due to this relatively new discovery, and since this virus does not seem to cause losses at the same level as, e.g., porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and porcine circovirus, little is known about its epidemiological properties. Members of this family share morphological properties in terms of positivesense single-stranded RNA genomes, envelope formation, and they all have the same open reading frame strategy in genome replication [1,21,22]
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