Identification of Uptick in Neurologic Syndrome Demonstrates Effectiveness of Surveillance

The Manager of the Canada West Swine Heath Intelligence Network reports the identification of an uptick in Neurologic syndrome in Alberta in Quarter Four of 2023 shows the organization’s Clinical Impression Surveys are working. The Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network has released its Quarter four report for 2023.

CWSHIN Manager Dr. Jette Christensen says, when looking for new diseases or presentations of known diseases, the problem is that its hard to show that anything is being accomplished in the absence of new diseases.

Quote-Dr. Jette Christensen-Canada West Swine Heath Intelligence Network:

We had a sudden dramatic increase in the scores that the practitioners give to Neurologic syndrome and I could see that suddenly was a many fold increase compared to all the previous quarters that we have surveys for so that's something that I immediately wanted to look into.I could dig a little bit deeper in the questionnaires and survey results and see that the high scores actually clustered in one province around Alberta.

I can't for sure say that it's in Alberta but I could see that the practitioners that I know practice in Alberta had higher scores than, for example, in Manitoba.Once we got in the call I could present that to the practitioners and the practitioners in Alberta said they recognised they had scored Neurologic syndrome higher than they usually do and they also said that it was because of the extremely mild fall they had in Alberta where the winter didn't really set in until December.

So, they suspected that this mild fall combined with difficulties with switching ventilation from fall to winter ventilation gave an uptick in Streptococcus suis that typically give neurological signs.

Dr. Christensen says the surveillance picked up an increase in Neurologic syndrome and that increase was investigated and confirmed which really showed the system is working as we want it to.