Tongue Tip Fluids Provide Accurate PRRS Detection

Research conducted by Iowa State University shows tongue tip fluids collected from stillborn and dead piglets can be used to accurately detect the presence of the virus responsible for PRRS. With the goal of improving the diagnostic value of tongue tips for PRRS surveillance, an Iowa State University study funded through the Swine Health Information Center, evaluated four different sample collection protocols across 597 tongue tips from stillborn and dead piglets.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says this is a relatively easy to use type of sample that's being assessed to determine its accuracy for detecting disease in swine.

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

The key findings really showed that virus isolation of PRRS can be done from tongue tip fluidsThis is important because, up until this time, it had not been proven that this could happen so verifying that the virus isolation can be done is important because that helps to specifically determine if live virus is present in samples that are collected, not just the presence of the RNA.

It's also important because it does provide a way to evaluate different sample protocols and then determine which of those really are the best suited for the best diagnostic outcomes.Those things are very important, especially when we're looking at newer sample types to provide veterinarians and producers a way to have confidence in utilization of these alternative sample types.

This information will be utilized and shared both with producers and veterinarians because a lot of times people are looking at what are different ways that are relatively labour friendly to be able to collect samples to assess disease status on their farms and tongue tip fluids were one of those samples that was identified as needing investigation so it was important to have research on this to be able to come up with production protocols that can be used for this sample type.

Dr. Becton acknowledges diagnostic tests can be costly so you want to optimize the diagnostic results from the samples submitted to the lab by understanding the protocols to follow when collecting those samples.Full results of the study can be found at swinehealth.org.For more visit Farmscape.Ca.