by Karoline Inong

Created on: May 03, 2009

Porcine Parvovirus Infection, PPV, is the most common and important cause of infectious infertility among swine. The porcine parvovirus they consider to be a pretty tough virus that multiplies normally in the intestine of the pig without causing clinical signs . It has a world-wide distribution where as if you were to test you pig herd for the porcine parvovirus, it is always almost certain that it will be present among your herd. This virus, unlike many viruses can continue to live outside the pig for many months and it is resistant to most disinfectants.

Symptoms:

In cases of acute outbreaks of this disease, the infection itself really doesn't cause any clinical symptoms other than the presence of mummified pigs at farrowing. Some other things you might notice if your pig herd is infected with PPV are:

* small litters associated with embryo loss before 35 days;

* mummified piglets varying in size from 30-160 mm;

* increased numbers of stillbirths;

* may be an increase in low birth weight for piglets but neonatal deaths are not affected.

Many may associate abortions of the newborns with PPV infection but it really is uncommon for that to happen. The acute disease period often last for up to 8 weeks then tends to decline for 4-6 weeks and then is typically followed by smaller course of mummified piglets for a further 4-6 weeks. This virus however, can take up to 4 months to infect all sows in a susceptible previously uninfected herd.

Causes:

Typically the causes of PPV are due to vaccines, whether it be failure to vaccinate or the vaccine being faulty or simply the incorrect storage of the vaccine. Some other causes of PPV are due to smaller herds, the virus may die out and then the sows essentially become susceptible to the virus. In larger herds, sometimes you may have a pockets of naive breeding females, most likely gilts, can actually maintain the disease. It can also not be your herd fault if you choose to buy swine semen and for some reason or another it wasn't checked for viruses properly and therefore may contain PPV.

Treatment:

There is no treatment at all for this virus, it cannot be eradicated from a herd. However, there are vaccines that you can vaccinate your gilts with before they are bred. Some may promote natural infection by using a common practice in where they arrange contact between seronegative gilts and seropositive sows, with the expectation that one or more of the sows will be shedding the parvovirus.

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