Evidence-based veterinary medicine, the PRRSV example

PhD project: evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM) perception by swine veterinarians: a European survey across diverse practitioner profiles.

108 pig veterinarians from 24 different European countries responded to the survey, with the aim of understanding their position, expectations, and barriers regarding the “evidence-based” approach.

3 groups of veterinarians have been highlighted in relation to the EBM approach: the “Open” ones have no barriers regarding its use and find the approach useful. The “Skeptical” group believes that the approach is not sufficiently developed in practice and have some barriers, although it is, for the most part, useful. Finally, a cluster for “Reluctant” ones: for them, the approach would not be useful in practice, and they have barriers regarding its use.

The next phase of the PhD project will focus on developing tools to address the obstacles to implementing the evidence-based medicine approach in the context of PRRS virus control.

Probable reversion to virulence of a PRRSV-1 MLV vaccine strain

Our team published the first case report of a PRRSV-1 MLV which might have reverted to virulence in France and has caused substantial economic losses.

The benefits of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) modified live virus vaccines (MLV) have been largely proven, however, the safety of these vaccines is questioned since vaccine strains can revert to virulence due to random mutations or recombination events. This case report describes the introduction of a PRRSV-1 strain derived from a MLV associated with an outbreak of reproductive disorder in a 1000-sow farrow-to-wean farm in France. It took 17 batches (34 weeks) to recover the baseline production of piglets after implementation of a PRRSV stabilization protocol, which represented a total loss of 812 weaned piglets.