[Oral fluid PCR monitoring for Aujeszky's disease virus detection in a swine farm].

Abstract

Aujeszky's disease virus infects pigs and causes latency in the absence of clinical signs, making its diagnosis very difficult. Due to the huge economic losses related to this disease, the Argentinian government has created and implemented a control and eradication plan to manage it. As part of the monitoring plan to assess the progress of the control and eradication plan for a positive status farm, oral fluid samples were obtained from animals at 40, 70, 90,120 and 130-160days of age, after one year of vaccination with a deleted and inactivated vaccine. These samples were processed using an antigen-PCR technique and positive results were obtained from 130-160day-old animals. Recovering DNA from Aujeszky's disease virus in oral fluids from field samples could enable the use of this technique for epidemiological surveillance in Aujeszkýs control and eradication programs.