Suchergebnisse

We studied the potential of red deer as bluetongue maintenance hosts and sentinels. Deer maintained detectable bluetongue virus (BTV) serotype 4 RNA for 1 year after the virus was cleared from livestock. However, the virus was not transmitted to yearlings. BTV serotype 1 RNA was detected in red deer immediately after its first detection in cattle. ; This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Natural, Rural and Marine Environment (RASVE 274/2007, and an agreement between Organismo Autónomo de Parques Nacionales (OAPN), Dirección General de Recursos Agricolas y Ganaderos (DGRAG), and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC). F.R.-F. is supported by a postdoctoral contract of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III of the Spanish government. ; Peer Reviewed

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al. ; Transboundary animal diseases can have very severe socio-economic impacts when introduced into new regions. The history of disease incursions into the European Union suggests that initial outbreaks were often initiated by illegal importation of meat and derived products. The European Union would benefit from decision-support tools to evaluate the risk of disease introduction caused by illegal imports in order to inform its surveillance strategy. However, due to the difficulty in quantifying illegal movements of animal products, very few studies of this type have been conducted. Using African swine fever as an example, this work presents a novel risk assessment framework for disease introduction into the European Union through illegal importation of meat and products. It uses a semi-quantitative approach based on factors that likely influence the likelihood of release of contaminated smuggled meat and products, and subsequent exposure of the susceptible population. The results suggest that the European Union is at non-negligible risk of African swine fever introduction through illegal importation of pork and products. On a relative risk scale with six categories from negligible to very high, five European Union countries were estimated at high (France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom) or moderate (Spain) risk of African swine fever release, five countries were at high risk of exposure if African swine fever were released (France, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain) and ten countries had a moderate exposure risk (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden and United Kingdom). The approach presented here and results obtained for African swine fever provide a basis for the enhancement of risk-based surveillance systems and disease prevention programmes in the European Union. ; This work was funded by the project ASFRISK (EC, FP7-KBBE-2007-1, Project #211691). ; Peer reviewed

5 páginas, 1 tabla, 1 figura. ; African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most complex viral diseases affecting both domestic and wild pigs. It is caused by ASF virus (ASFV), the only DNA virus which can be efficiently transmitted by an arthropod vector, soft ticks of the genus Ornithodoros. These ticks can be part of ASFV-transmission cycles, and in Europe, O. erraticus was shown to be responsible for long-term maintenance of ASFV in Spain and Portugal. In 2014, the disease has been reintroduced into the European Union, affecting domestic pigs and, importantly, also the Eurasian wild boar population. In a first attempt to assess the risk of a tick-wild boar transmission cycle in Central Europe that would further complicate eradication of the disease, over 700 pre-existing serum samples from wild boar hunted in four representative German Federal States were investigated for the presence of antibodies directed against salivary antigen of Ornithodoros erraticus ticks using an indirect ELISA format. ; This work has been funded by the European Research Project ASFORCE ("Targeted research effort on African swine fever", grant agreement 311931). ; Peer reviewed

Short communication.-- et al. ; Bluetongue (BT) is a climate change-related emerging infectious disease in Europe. Outbreaks of serotypes 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, and 16 are challenging Central and Western Europe since 1998. Measures to control or eradicate bluetongue virus (BTV) from Europe have been implemented, including movement restrictions and vaccination of domestic BTV-susceptible ruminants. However, these measures are difficult to apply in wild free-ranging hosts of the virus, like red deer (Cervus elaphus), which could play a role in the still unclear epidemiology of BT in Europe. We show for the first time that BTV RNA can be detected in European red deer blood for long periods, comparable to those of domestic ruminants, after experimental infection with BTV-1 and BTV-8. BTV RNA was detected in experimentally infected red deer blood up to the end of the study (98¿112 dpi). BTV-specific antibodies were found in serum both by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and virus neutralization (VNT) from 8 to 12 dpi to the end of the study, peaking at 17¿28 dpi. Our results indicate that red deer can be infected with BTV and maintain BTV RNA for long periods, remaining essentially asymptomatic. Thus, unvaccinated red deer populations have the potential to be a BT reservoir in Europe, and could threaten the success of the European BTV control strategy. Therefore, wild and farmed red deer should be taken into account for BTV surveillance, and movement restrictions and vaccination schemes applied to domestic animals should be adapted to include farmed or translocated red deer. ; We acknowledge the funding from JCCM PAI08-0287-8502, the Government of Scotland, and INIA-MARM CC08-020 (additional support to CISA). Caterina Falconi had a grant from the Government of Sardinia. ; Peer Reviewed

African Swine Fever (ASF) is one of the most complex and significant diseases from a sanitary-economic perspective currently affecting the world's swine-farming industry. ASF has been endemic in Sardinia (Italy) since 1978, and several control and eradication programmes have met with limited success. In this traditional ASF endemic area, there are three susceptible host populations for this virus sharing the same habitat: wild boar, farmed domestic pigs and non-registered free-ranging pigs (known as "brado" animals). The main goal of this study was to determine and predict fine-scale spatial interactions of this multi-host system in relation to the epidemiology of ASF in the main endemic area of Sardinia, Montes-Orgosolo. To this end, simultaneous monitoring of GPS–GSM collared wild boar and free-ranging pigs sightings were performed to predict interaction indexes through latent selection difference functions with environmental, human and farming factors. Regarding epidemiological assessment, the spatial inter-specific interaction indexes obtained here were used to correlate ASF notifications in wild boar and domestic pig farms. Daily movement patterns, home ranges (between 120.7 and 2,622.8 ha) and resource selection of wild boar were obtained for the first time on the island. Overall, our prediction model showed the highest spatial interactions between wild boar and free-ranging pigs in areas close to pig farms. A spatially explicit model was obtained to map inter-specific interaction over the complete ASF-endemic area of the island. Our approach to monitoring interaction indexes may help explain the occurrence of ASF notifications in wild boar and domestic pigs on a fine-spatial scale. These results support the recent and effective eradication measures taken in Sardinia. In addition, this methodology could be extrapolated to apply in the current epidemiological scenarios of ASF in Eurasia, where exist multi-host systems involving free-ranging pigs and wild boar. ; The present work was financially supported by the European project ASFORCE (FP7 - KBBE.2012) and Spanish project RTA2015-00033-C02-02 Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA). JB is supported by postdoctoral "Juan de la Cierva" contracts FJCI-2015-23643 from MINECO-UCM and IJCI-2017-33539 from MINECO-UCLM. EC-F and CJ are recipients of Spanish Government-funded PhD fellowships for the Training of Future Scholars (FPU) given by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. We also thank the EU project (H2020 VACDIVA 862874). ; Peer reviewed

We found SARS-CoV-2 RNA in 6 of 71 ferrets (8.4%) and isolated the virus from one rectal swab. Natural SARS-CoV-2 infection does occur in kept ferrets, at least under circumstances of high viral circulation in the human population. However, small ferret collections are probably unable to maintain prolonged virus circulation. ; This study received funding from ISCIII, Spanish Government, grant number: COV20/01385 and EFC was supported by a grant from Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. ; No

African swine fever (ASF) is a complex disease of swine, caused by a large DNA virus belonging to the family Asfarviridae. The disease shows variable clinical signs, with high case fatality rates, up to 100%, in the acute forms. ASF is currently present in Africa and Europe where it circulates in different scenarios causing a high socio-economic impact. In most affected regions, control has not been effective in part due to lack of a vaccine. The availability of an effective and safe ASFV vaccines would support and enforce control–eradication strategies. Therefore, work leading to the rational development of protective ASF vaccines is a high priority. Several factors have hindered vaccine development, including the complexity of the ASF virus particle and the large number of proteins encoded by its genome. Many of these virus proteins inhibit the host's immune system thus facilitating virus replication and persistence. We review previous work aimed at understanding ASFV–host interactions, including mechanisms of protective immunity, and approaches for vaccine development. These include live attenuated vaccines, and "subunit" vaccines, based on DNA, proteins, or virus vectors. In the shorter to medium term, live attenuated vaccines are the most promising and best positioned candidates. Gaps and future research directions are evaluated. ; This review have been promoted and supported by European Commision Directorate-General SANTE, Health and Food Safety, throughout the European Union Reference Laboratory Grant 2016–2017. We thank Pippa Hawes, for providing Electron Microscopy ; We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).