Increased Porcine Circovirus Type 2 Detection Raises Concern

An increased detection of Porcine circovirus Type 2 identified in the U.S. in June has captured the attention of the Swine Health Information Center.The Swine Health Information Center's monthly domestic swine diseases surveillance report, released as part of its July enewsletter, indicates a marked increase in the PCR detection of Porcine circovirus Type 2.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says this change is both interesting and concerning and needs to be on everyone's radar.

Clip-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center :

With regards to PCV2 we saw an increase in the percent detection specifically in the wean to market population.In May the percent positive rate was 36.7 percent and in June it went up to 50.9 percent so it was a marked increase in the percent positive of pigs with PCV2 in that wean to market phase.

The advisory group has suggested this could be attributed to the PCV2 d genotype and that potentially more vaccine companies were validating that their product protected pigs from PCV2 d.However, there were some practitioners in the advisory group that did report that they were seeing lower Ct values, so a higher virus load and lymphoid depletion in PCV2 cases that they had submitted to diagnostic labs.

This is the first month we've seen this.Could it be attributed to vaccine companies versus increases in the field.I think that's yet to be determined but something for the listeners to have on their radar.Could we be seeing an increase in PCV2 cases associated with potentially a new genotype or a more virulent strain?

Dr. Niederwerder says SHIC will continue to monitor the situation on a daily basis to determine if the virus has changed or if some other factor is responsible for the increase.