SHIC Reports New PRRS Strain Has Spread to Six U.S. States

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center suggests difficulty containing the spread of a new strain of PRRS shows the importance of using diagnostics to identify the strain circulating in your herd.

The Swine Health Information Center's January domestic swine disease surveillance report, released as part of it's monthly enewsletter indicates a fairly new strain of PRRS that was originally identified in Iowa, has now spread to six states.

Dr. Megan Niederwerder, the Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center, notes there have been reports from the field associated with prolonged PRRS infections and difficulty eliminating PRRS.

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

We have an emergence of PRRS Lineage 1C RFLP pattern 1-2-4.This is a fairly new PRRS strain that, over the course of the year 2022 we saw an increase in detection at twice that of 2021 so the detection of this 1-2-4 strain had doubled from 2021 to 2022.

We've also seen an increase in that strain's detection across more states.The stain has now been detected in Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio.We are keeping that strain absolutely on our radar for continued emergence and detection across the U.S. herd.

Dr. Niederwerder suggests the difficulty eliminating PRRS, underscores the importance of using diagnostics to identify the strain circulating in your herd and understanding that this virus has high variability and can change over time.

She says, if you're using a live virus vaccine, it's important to determine the strain to know if the vaccine will be effective and to be aware of the potential for new strains to develop and emerge.