scholarly journals Predicting the Time to Detect Moderately Virulent African Swine Fever Virus in Finisher Swine Herds Using a Stochastic Disease Transmission Model

Author(s):  
Sasidhar Malladi ◽  
Amos Ssematimba ◽  
Peter J. Bonney ◽  
Kaitlyn M. St. Charles ◽  
Timothy Boyer ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious and devastating pig disease that has caused extensive global economic losses. Understanding ASF virus (ASFV) transmission dynamics within a herd is necessary in order to prepare for and respond to an outbreak in the United States. Although the transmission parameters for the highly virulent ASF strains have been estimated in several articles, there are relatively few studies focused on moderately virulent strains. Using an approximate Bayesian computation algorithm in conjunction with Monte Carlo simulation, we have estimated the adequate contact rate for moderately virulent ASFV strains and determined the statistical distributions for the durations of mild and severe clinical signs using individual, pig-level data. A discrete individual based disease transmission model was then used to estimate the time to detect ASF infection based on increased mild clinical signs, severe clinical signs, or daily mortality. Results: Our results indicate that it may take two weeks or longer to detect ASF in a finisher swine herd via mild clinical signs or increased mortality beyond levels expected in routine production. A key factor contributing to the extended time to detect ASF in a herd is the fairly long latently infected period for an individual pig (mean 4.5, 95% P.I., 2.4 - 7.2 days). Conclusion: These transmission model parameter estimates and estimated time to detection via clinical signs provide valuable information that can be used not only to support emergency preparedness but also to inform other simulation models of evaluating regional disease spread.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Jurado ◽  
Lina Mur ◽  
María Sol Pérez Aguirreburualde ◽  
Estefanía Cadenas-Fernández ◽  
Beatriz Martínez-López ◽  
...  

Abstract African swine fever causes substantial economic losses in the swine industry in affected countries. Traditionally confined to Africa with only occasional incursions into other regions, ASF began spreading into Caucasian countries and Eastern Europe in 2007, followed by Western Europe and Asia in 2018. Such a dramatic change in the global epidemiology of ASF has resulted in concerns that the disease may continue to spread into disease-free regions such as the US. In this study, we estimated the risk of introduction of ASF virus into the US through smuggling of pork in air passenger luggage. Results suggest that the mean risk of ASFV introduction into the US via this route has increased by 183.33% from the risk estimated before the disease had spread into Western Europe or Asia. Most of the risk (67.68%) was associated with flights originating from China and Hong Kong, followed by the Russian Federation (26.92%). Five US airports accounted for >90% of the risk. Results here will help to inform decisions related to the design of ASF virus surveillance strategies in the US.


Viruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Yanyan Zhang ◽  
Junnan Ke ◽  
Jingyuan Zhang ◽  
Huixian Yue ◽  
Teng Chen ◽  
...  

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF) which reaches up to 100% case fatality in domestic pigs and wild boar and causes significant economic losses in the swine industry. Lack of knowledge of the function of ASFV genes is a serious impediment to the development of the safe and effective vaccine. Herein, I267L was identified as a relative conserved gene and an early expressed gene. A recombinant virus (SY18ΔI267L) with I267L gene deletion was produced by replacing I267L of the virulent ASFV SY18 with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) cassette. The replication kinetics of SY18ΔI267L is similar to that of the parental isolate in vitro. Moreover, the doses of 102.0 TCID50 (n = 5) and 105.0 TCID50 (n = 5) SY18ΔI267L caused virulent phenotype, severe clinical signs, viremia, high viral load, and mortality in domestic pigs inoculated intramuscularly as the virulent parental virus strain. Therefore, the deletion of I267L does not affect the replication or the virulence of ASFV. Utilizing the fluorescent-tagged virulence deletant can be easy to gain a visual result in related research such as the inactivation effect of some drugs, disinfectants, extracts, etc. on ASFV.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunfeng Shi ◽  
Xuegang Ban

We developed a mobility-informed disease-transmission model for COVID-19, inspired by collision theory in gas-phase chemistry. This simple kinetic model leads to a closed-form infectious population as a function of time and cumulative mobility. This model uses fatality data from Johns Hopkins to infer the infectious population in the past, and mobility data from Google, without social-distancing policy, geological or demographic inputs. It was found that the model appears to be valid for twenty hardest hit counties in the United States. Based on this model, the number of infected people grows (shrinks) exponentially once the relative mobility exceeds (falls below) a critical value (~30% for New York City and ~60% for all other counties, relative to a median mobility from January 3 to February 6, 2020). A simple mobility cap can be used by government at different levels to control COVID-19 transmission in reopening or imposing another shutdown.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanyan Zhang ◽  
Junnan Ke ◽  
Jingyuan Zhang ◽  
Jinjin Yang ◽  
Huixian Yue ◽  
...  

African swine fever (ASF) is a severe hemorrhagic infectious disease in pigs caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV), leading to devastating economic losses in the epidemic regions. Its control currently depends on thorough culling and clearance of the diseased and the surrounding suspected pigs. ASF vaccine has been extensively explored for years worldwide, especially in hog-intensive areas where it is highly desired, but it is still unavailable due to numerous reasons. Herein, we reported another ASF vaccine candidate named SY18ΔI226R bearing a deletion of the I226R gene in replacement of an eGFP expression cassette at the right end of the viral genome. This deletion results in complete loss of virulence of SY18 as the gene-deleted strain does not cause any clinical symptoms in all pigs inoculated with either a dosage of 10 4.0 TCID 50 or 10 7.0 TCID 50 . An apparent viremia with the gradual decline was monitored, while the virus shedding was only occasionally detected in oral- or anal swabs. ASFV specific antibody appeared at 9 days post-inoculation. After intramuscular challenge with its parental strain ASFV SY18 on 21 days post inoculation, all the challenged pigs survived without obvious febrile or abnormal clinical signs. No viral DNA could be detected on the dissection of any tissue when viremia disappeared. These indicated that SY18ΔI226R is safe in swine and elicits a robust immunity to the virulent ASFV infection. IMPORTANCE: Outbreaks of African swine fever have resulted in devastating losses to the swine industry worldwide, but there is currently no commercial vaccine available. Although several vaccine candidates have been reported, none has been approved for use due to several reasons, especially the ones concerning bio-safety. Here, we identified a new undescribed functional gene, I226R. When deleted from the ASFV genome, the virus completely loses its virulence in the swine. Importantly, pigs infected with this gene-deleted virus were resistant to infection by an intramuscular challenge of 10 2.5 or 10 4.0 TCID 50 of its virulent parental virus. Furthermore, rarely the nucleic acid of the gene-deleted virus and its virulent parental virus was detected from oral- or anal swabs. Viruses could not be detected in any tissues after necropsy when viremia became negative, indicating that robust immunity was achieved. Therefore, SY18ΔI226R is a novel, ideal and efficacious vaccine candidate for genotype II ASF.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Havumaki ◽  
Joseph NS Eisenberg ◽  
Claire P Mattison ◽  
Benjamin A Lopman ◽  
Ismael R Ortega-Sanchez ◽  
...  

1AbstractBackgroundNorovirus outbreaks are notoriously explosive, with dramatic symptomology and rapid disease spread. Children are particularly vulnerable to infection and drive norovirus transmission due to their high contact rates with each other and the environment. Despite the explosive nature of norovirus outbreaks, attack rates in schools and daycares remain low with the majority of students not reporting symptoms.MethodsWe explore immunologic and epidemiologic mechanisms that may underlie epidemic norovirus transmission dynamics using a disease transmission model. Towards this end, we compared different model scenarios, including innate resistance and acquired immunity (collectively denoted ‘immunity’), stochastic extinction, and an individual exclusion intervention. We calibrated our model to daycare and school outbreaks from national surveillance data.ResultsRecreating the low attack rates observed in daycare and school outbreaks required a model with immunity. However, immunity alone resulted in shorter duration outbreaks than what was observed. The addition of individual exclusion (to the immunity model) extended outbreak durations by reducing the amount of time that symptomatic people contribute to transmission. Including both immunity and individual exclusion mechanisms resulted in simulations where both attack rates and outbreak durations were consistent with surveillance data.ConclusionsThe epidemiology of norovirus outbreaks in daycare and school settings cannot be well described by a simple transmission model in which all individuals start as fully susceptible. Interventions should leverage population immunity and encourage more rigorous individual exclusion to improve venue-level control measures.


Pathogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Ros-Lucas ◽  
Florencia Correa-Fiz ◽  
Laia Bosch-Camós ◽  
Fernando Rodriguez ◽  
Julio Alonso-Padilla

African swine fever virus is the etiological agent of African swine fever, a transmissible severe hemorrhagic disease that affects pigs, causing massive economic losses. There is neither a treatment nor a vaccine available, and the only method to control its spread is by extensive culling of pigs. So far, classical vaccine development approaches have not yielded sufficiently good results in terms of concomitant safety and efficacy. Nowadays, thanks to advances in genomic and proteomic techniques, a reverse vaccinology strategy can be explored to design alternative vaccine formulations. In this study, ASFV protein sequences were analyzed using an in-house pipeline based on publicly available immunoinformatic tools to identify epitopes of interest for a prospective vaccine ensemble. These included experimentally validated sequences from the Immune Epitope Database, as well as de novo predicted sequences. Experimentally validated and predicted epitopes were prioritized following a series of criteria that included evolutionary conservation, presence in the virulent and currently circulating variant Georgia 2007/1, and lack of identity to either the pig proteome or putative proteins from pig gut microbiota. Following this strategy, 29 B-cell, 14 CD4+ T-cell and 6 CD8+ T-cell epitopes were selected, which represent a starting point to investigating the protective capacity of ASFV epitope-based vaccines.


Viruses ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1474
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Lopez ◽  
Juanita van Heerden ◽  
Laia Bosch-Camós ◽  
Francesc Accensi ◽  
Maria Jesus Navas ◽  
...  

African swine fever (ASF) has become the major threat for the global swine industry. Furthermore, the epidemiological situation of African swine fever virus (ASFV) in some endemic regions of Sub-Saharan Africa is worse than ever, with multiple virus strains and genotypes currently circulating in a given area. Despite the recent advances on ASF vaccine development, there are no commercial vaccines yet, and most of the promising vaccine prototypes available today have been specifically designed to fight the genotype II strains currently circulating in Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Previous results from our laboratory have demonstrated the ability of BA71∆CD2, a recombinant LAV lacking CD2v, to confer protection against homologous (BA71) and heterologous genotype I (E75) and genotype II (Georgia2007/01) ASFV strains, both belonging to same clade (clade C). Here, we extend these results using BA71∆CD2 as a tool trying to understand ASFV cross-protection, using phylogenetically distant ASFV strains. We first observed that five out of six (83.3%) of the pigs immunized once with 106 PFU of BA71∆CD2 survived the tick-bite challenge using Ornithodoros sp. soft ticks naturally infected with RSA/11/2017 strain (genotype XIX, clade D). Second, only two out of six (33.3%) survived the challenge with Ken06.Bus (genotype IX, clade A), which is phylogenetically more distant to BA71∆CD2 than the RSA/11/2017 strain. On the other hand, homologous prime-boosting with BA71∆CD2 only improved the survival rate to 50% after Ken06.Bus challenge, all suffering mild ASF-compatible clinical signs, while 100% of the pigs immunized with BA71∆CD2 and boosted with the parental BA71 virulent strain survived the lethal challenge with Ken06.Bus, without almost no clinical signs of the disease. Our results confirm that cross-protection is a multifactorial phenomenon that not only depends on sequence similarity. We believe that understanding this complex phenomenon will be useful for designing future vaccines for ASF-endemic areas.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2694
Author(s):  
Heehyeon Jeong ◽  
Jungyeol Hong ◽  
Dongjoo Park

The outbreak of African swine fever virus has raised global concerns regarding epidemic livestock diseases. Therefore, various studies have attempted to prevent and monitor epidemic livestock diseases. Most of them have emphasized that integrated studies between the public health and transportation engineering are essential to prevent the livestock disease spread. However, it has been difficult to obtain big data related to the mobility of livestock-related vehicles. Thus, it is challenging to conduct research that comprehensively considers cargo vehicles’ movement carrying livestock and the spread of livestock infectious diseases. This study developed the framework for integrating the digital tachograph data (DTG) and trucks’ visit history of livestock facility data. The DTG data include commercial trucks’ coordinate information, but it excludes actual livestock-related vehicle trajectories such as freight types and facility visit history. Therefore, the integrated database we developed can be used as a significant resource for preventing the spread of livestock epidemics by pre-monitoring livestock transport vehicles’ movements. In future studies, epidemiological research on infectious diseases and livestock species will be able to conduct through the derived integrating database. Furthermore, the indicators of the spread of infectious diseases could be suggested based on both microscopic and macroscopic roadway networks to manage livestock epidemics.


Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 177
Author(s):  
Jutta Pikalo ◽  
Paul Deutschmann ◽  
Melina Fischer ◽  
Hanna Roszyk ◽  
Martin Beer ◽  
...  

African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes a hemorrhagic disease in pigs with high socio-economic consequences. To lower the impact of disease incursions, early detection is crucial. In the context of experimental animal trials, we evaluated diagnostic workflows for a high sample throughput in active surveillance, alternative sample matrices for passive surveillance, and lateral flow devices (LFD) for rapid testing. We could demonstrate that EDTA blood is significantly better suited for early ASFV detection than serum. Tissues recommended by the respective diagnostic manuals were in general comparable in their performance, with spleen samples giving best results. Superficial lymph nodes, ear punches, and different blood swabs were also evaluated as potential alternatives. In summary, all matrices yielded positive results at the peak of clinical signs and could be fit for purpose in passive surveillance. However, weaknesses were discovered for some matrices when it comes to the early phase of infection or recovery. The antigen LFD showed variable results with best performance in the clinical phase. The antibody LFD was quite comparable with ELISA systems. Concluding, alternative approaches are feasible but have to be embedded in control strategies selecting test methods and sample materials following a “fit-for-purpose” approach.


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