SHIC-AASV Examine Undiagnosed Respiratory Disease

Swine Veterinarians and swine producers are being advised to include tissue from the trachea when submitting samples to the veterinary diagnostic labs for the diagnosis of respiratory infections.

A webinar posted to the Swine Health Information Center and American Association of Swine Veterinarians websites looks at undiagnosed respiratory disease and what to submit to help the diagnosticians identify these infections.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains scientists examined banked tissue samples from respiratory cases that were negative to the usual panel of respiratory pathogens, such as PRRS and influenza.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

What we've done is look at the next generation sequencing and some more advanced type of diagnostics and uncovered an association with Porcine astrovirus 4 for example and Porcine hemagglutinating encephalomyelitis virus, a long name, but what it what it amounts to is those types of viruses are not usually associated with respiratory cases and we've been able to identify those in these difficult cases where the normal pathogens have been negative.

What it amounts to, especially in these types of respiratory cases where there is a chronic cough, maybe there has been some diagnoses done and they are influenza negative but they still have a chronic dry cough, especially the nursery phase, we're encouraging people to submit trachea along with lung samples.

It's not on the top of mind for practitioners to do but, if we would get trachea samples as well as lung samples, we think that that will help us to better identify the cause of those types of chronic coughing episodes.

The SHIC/AASV webinar can be accessed through the Swine Health Information Center or American Association of Swine Veterinarians websites.