Validation Tools Under Development for Post-Weaning E. coli Diarrhea Interventions

Researchers with the University of Guelph are developing the tools needed to validate interventions being developed to prevent swine disease, such as post-weaning E. coli diarrhea.

As part of research being conducted with funding provided by Swine Innovation Porc, Ontario Pork, and the Ontario Agr-Food Innovation Alliance, scientists with the University of Guelph have been investigating the response in pigs challenged by E. coli in order to optimize the infection model used to assess interventions being developed to control post-weaning E. coli diarrhea.

Dr. Vahab Farzan, a Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Population Medicine and the Department of Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph says the objectives are to develop and optimize an infection model for assessing the effectiveness of interventions such as vaccination or probiotics and to use the infection model.

Clip-Dr. Vahab Farzan-University of Guelph:

It is very important to evaluate the effectiveness of those methods, like vaccine or probiotics and this should be done first under an experimental challenge study, which needs to challenge the pigs with the bacteria and then see how they respond to infection in pigs vaccinated as opposed to those not vaccinated as opposed to those not received it and it's very important to have an infection model.

When I'm talking about the infection model that means that there are different parameters that will have impact on pig response to the infection.One of them is, for example, the age of the pig.

The genetics of the pig is another parameter, how much bacteria we should give to the pigs to induce diseases in them. These are main parameters that we need to optimise an infection model first and then use that infection model to evaluate intervention.

Dr. Farzan says it's important that the infection model deliver enough of the infectious agent to trigger a disease response but not enough to kill the pig.