PIG PRRS

disease immunity

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PRRSV in pigs

PRRSV

social

Economic

Preventions

prrsV in Pigs

Resistance

Symptoms:

• Blue ears
• Blue abdomen
• Weight loss
• Fever
• Lethargy
• Diarrhoea
• Respiratory distress (mostly leads to pneumonia)
• Reproductive failure

prrsV in pigs

• PRRSV - Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndome Virus
• Cause by a virus
• Can cause reproductive failure in a sow pig.
• Respiratory problems in weiner pigs, up to finisher pigs.
• Introduced via a vector (e.g. flies) and is windborne.
• Mainly spreads between pigs via nose to nose contact and sexual intercourse

• Select PRRSV-negative semen when breeding pigs.
• Vaccination (2 types)
• Inactivated Vaccines - reflect the diversity of the virus (good against many strains)
• MLV Vaccine - reduced severity of specific strains (good against specific strains)

Preventions

Economic impacts

• Smaller litter sizes and higher piglet mortality rate -> less pigs make it to the slaughter stage.
• £40,000 average treatment per herd affected by PRRSV
• Increased pork price

Social Impacts

Farmers in LIC struggle to access either vaccine, making disease outbreaks highly common. This can have catastrophic effects on food supply

Resistance

• Xu, Zhou, Mu et al. used gene editing technology to delete the genes that encode the CD163 and pAPN proteins in pigs
• Non-edited pigs were sick when infected, but the gene-edited pigs remained healthy

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