More porcine diseases are emerging, and spreading, to torment the world's pigs and their farmers and endanger public health.
Some pose direct health risks to humans. Others indirectly endanger public health by their treatment with antibiotics creating antibiotic resistant disease spreading to human populations and endangering hospitals.
Obviously, something is very seriously wrong with modern pig farming systems.
But, it may not just be the farming systems, and may also be a result of the massive increase in live movements plus semen and embryos, domestically and internationally, over recent years.
Pig people travel more too: workers in Britain, Canada the USA, and elsewhere, are often immigrants. Veterinarians work across national borders too. Disease moves quickly around the world and the interaction between different diseases and strains can increase the problems.
This new pig disease, discovered in Denmark, and named New Neonatal Diarrhoeic Syndrome - NNPDS, is unresponsive to
antibiotics.
The highlights of the abstract (Pig333) are given below, the full text can be reached here.
Microbiological, pathological and histological
findings in four Danish pig herds affected by a new neonatal diarrhoea syndrome
06-Nov-2013 (yesterday)
Hanne Kongsted, Beata Jonach,
Svend Haugegaard, Øystein Angen, Sven E Jorsal, Branko Kokotovic, Lars E
Larsen, Tim K Jensen and Jens P Nielsen. Microbiological, pathological and
histological findings in four Danish pig herds affected by a new neonatal
diarrhoea syndrome. BMC Veterinary Research 2013, 9:206
doi:10.1186/1746-6148-9-206.
Background
Neonatal
diarrhoea is a frequent clinical condition in commercial swine herds,
previously regarded to be uncomplicated to treat. However, since 2008 it seems
that a new neonatal diarrhoeic syndrome unresponsive to antibiotics and common
management practices has emerged....
...Conclusions
The
results of the study supported the hypothesis that a new neonatal porcine
diarrhoea was present in the investigated herds, since no known pathogen(s) or
management factors could explain the diarrhoeal outbreaks. Based on the
findings in the four herds the following case-definition of NNPDS was
suggested: Non-haemorrhagic diarrhoea during the first week of life, without
detection of known infectious pathogens, characterized by milk-filled stomachs
and flaccid intestines at necropsy.
