Swine Health Information Center Introduces Tool to Help Improve Understanding of PRRS

The Swine Health Information Center has introduced a tool that provides insight into the evolution and distribution of specific strains of Porcine eproductive and Respiratory Syndrome over time, space and age groups.The Swine Health Information Center's May domestic swine disease monitoring report, released as part of its monthly eNewsletter, highlights a spike in PRRS virus case positivity in April in wean-to-finish sites and notes, compared to previous years, it was the highest April case positivity since 2018.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says the report includes a bonus page which explains the new PRRS virus nomenclature and its implementation in the swine disease reporting system dashboards and BLAST tool.

Quote-Dr. Lisa Becton-Swine Health Information Center:

The bonus page provides highlights and insight into PRRS evolution and distribution of specific strains over time, space and age groups.What this does is it enhances the ability for epidemiologic tracking of outbreaks, it can identify emerging variants and provides insights into genetic relationships between the different sequences that are identified over time.

Some of the pages displayed include lineage distribution by month but then also a deeper dive into the specific lineages and what is seen over time.The goal of this information is to help producers and their veterinarians understand the viral changes and how best to implement different management strategies to help reduce the impact of the PRRS virus.

The Swine Health Information Center's monthly domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports as well as the PRRS bonus page and additional swine health information can be found at swinehealth.org.