Salmonellosis in swine: Clinical perspectives

Abstract

Salmonella is one of the most important food-borne zoonotic pathogens, causing acute or chronic digestive diseases such as enteritis. The acute form of enteritis is common in young pigs of 2 - 4 months of age. The main symptoms include high fever (<TEX>$41-42^{\circ}C$</TEX>), loss of appetite, and increased mortality within 2 - 4 days of onset of the disease. It is often the cause of increasing mortality, decreasing growth rate and reducing feed efficiency of piglets. In the case of chronic enteritis in pigs, the main symptom is weight loss due to the continuing severe diarrhea. Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and Salmonella enterica serovar Choleraesuis are typical pig adapted serotypes, which cause one of four major syndromes: enteric fever, enterocolitis/diarrhea, bacteremia and chronic asymptomatic carriage. These syndromes cause a huge economic burden to swine industry by reducing production. Therefore, it is necessary that swine industries should strive to decrease Salmonellosis in pigs in order to reduce economic losses. There are several measures, such as vaccination to prevent salmonellosis, that are implemented differently from country to country. For the treatment of Salmonella, ongoing antibiotic treatment is needed. However constant doses of antibiotics can be a problem because of antibiotic resistance. Therefore, the focus should be made more on prevention than treatment. In this review, we addressed the basic information about Salmonella, route of infection, clinical symptoms, and prevention of Salmonellosis.