Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.2
3.0
Journals
Animals
Special Issues
African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts
share announcement

African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Pigs".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 23672

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Katja Schulz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Epidemiology, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Südufer 10, 17493 Greifswald, Insel Riems, Germany
Interests: African swine fever; epidemiology; surveillance; participatory epidemiology; wild boar
Dr. Anette Boklund

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Interests: African swine fever; epidemiology; risk assessment; biosecurity; simulation modeling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The time when African swine fever (ASF) mainly affected the African continent is long gone. On the contrary, the number of affected countries continues to grow, and the global interest in the disease seems to be increasing both scientifically and economically. The disease affects only pig species, but transmission between species is possible. Despite intensive scientific efforts, there are still large gaps in knowledge and uncertainties regarding the virus, its spread, and the role of various factors in the epidemiology of the disease (e.g., contact between domestic and wild pigs, vectors, surviving animals, socioeconomic factors, etc.). All these uncertainties as well as the continuous spread of the disease underline the importance of further scientific studies on ASF, the efficiency of surveillance and control measures, progress in vaccine development, and host–pathogen–environment interactions.

We would like to invite reviews and original research to fill some of these knowledge gaps and thus support the successful control of ASF.

Dr. Katja Schulz 
Dr. Anette Boklund
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • african swine fever (ASF)
  • surveillance and control
  • wild boar–domestic pig interface
  • transmission and spread
  • field epidemiology
  • socioeconomic aspects
  • vaccines
  • modeling
  • diagnostics
  • host–pathogen–environment interactions

Published Papers (7 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Editorial

Jump to: Research, Review

3 pages, 186 KiB  
Editorial
The Epidemiology of African Swine Fever, Its Complexity and the Requirement for Multiple Solution Approaches
by Katja Schulz and Anette Boklund
Animals 2020, 10(10), 1900; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10101900 - 16 Oct 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2038
Abstract
Searching for the term “African swine fever” (ASF) in the title of publications in the Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus during the period of 1955–2020 resulted in an average of 2009 detected articles [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)

Research

Jump to: Editorial, Review

15 pages, 3805 KiB  
Article
Genome-Wide Diversity Analysis of African Swine Fever Virus Based on a Curated Dataset
by Jingyue Bao, Yong Zhang, Chuan Shi, Qinghua Wang, Shujuan Wang, Xiaodong Wu, Shengbo Cao, Fengping Xu and Zhiliang Wang
Animals 2022, 12(18), 2446; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12182446 - 16 Sep 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2525
Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) is a lethal contagious viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boars caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV). The pandemic spread of ASF has had serious effects on the global pig industry. Virus genome sequencing and comparison [...] Read more.
African swine fever (ASF) is a lethal contagious viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boars caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV). The pandemic spread of ASF has had serious effects on the global pig industry. Virus genome sequencing and comparison play an important role in tracking the outbreaks of the disease and tracing the transmission of the virus. Although more than 140 ASFV genome sequences have been deposited in the public databases, the genome-wide diversity of ASFV remains unclear. Here we prepared a curated dataset of ASFV genome sequences by filtering genomes with sequencing errors as well as duplicated genomes. A total of 123 ASFV genome sequences were included in the dataset, representing 10 genotypes collected between 1949 and 2020. Phylogenetic analysis based on whole-genome sequences provided high-resolution topology in differentiating closely related ASFV isolates, and drew new clues in the classification of some ASFV isolates. Genome-wide diversity of ASFV genomes was explored by pairwise sequence similarity comparison and ORF distribution comparison. Tandem repeat sequences were found widely distributed and highly varied in ASFV genomes. Structural variation and highly variable poly G or poly C tracts also contributed to the genome diversity. This study expanded our knowledge on the patterns of genetic diversity and evolution of ASFV, and provided valuable information for diagnosis improvement and vaccine development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 3418 KiB  
Article
The Development of a Multiplex Real-Time Quantitative PCR Assay for the Differential Detection of the Wild-Type Strain and the MGF505-2R, EP402R and I177L Gene-Deleted Strain of the African Swine Fever Virus
by Kang Zhao, Kaichuang Shi, Qingan Zhou, Chenyong Xiong, Shenglan Mo, Hongjin Zhou, Feng Long, Haina Wei, Liping Hu and Meilan Mo
Animals 2022, 12(14), 1754; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12141754 - 8 Jul 2022
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2382
Abstract
African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes African swine fever (ASF), a devastating hemorrhagic disease of domestic pigs and wild boars. Currently, the MGF505R, EP402R (CD2v) and I177L gene-deleted ASFV strains were confirmed to be the ideal vaccine candidate strains. To develop an assay [...] Read more.
African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes African swine fever (ASF), a devastating hemorrhagic disease of domestic pigs and wild boars. Currently, the MGF505R, EP402R (CD2v) and I177L gene-deleted ASFV strains were confirmed to be the ideal vaccine candidate strains. To develop an assay for differentiating the wild-type and gene-deleted ASFV strains, four pairs of specific primers and TaqMan probes targeting the ASFV B646L (p72), I177L, MGF505-2R and EP402R (CD2v) genes were designed. A multiplex real-time qPCR assay for the differential detection of the wild-type and gene-deleted ASFV strains was developed after optimizing the reaction conditions, including the annealing temperature, primer concentration and probe concentration. The results showed that the multiplex real-time qPCR assay can specifically test the ASFV B646L (p72), I177L, MGF505-2R and EP402R (CD2v) genes with a limit of detection (LOD) of 32.1 copies/μL for the B646L (p72) gene, and 3.21 copies/μL for the I177L, MGF505-2R and EP402R (CD2v) genes. However, the assay cannot test for the classical swine fever virus (CSFV), porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV), porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), PCV3 and pseudorabies virus (PRV). The assay demonstrated good repeatability and reproducibility with coefficients of variation (CV) less than 1.56% for both the intra- and inter-assay. The assay was used to test 4239 clinical samples, and the results showed that 12.60% (534/4239) samples were positive for ASFV, of which 10 samples lacked the EP402R gene, 6 samples lacked the MGF505-2R gene and 14 samples lacked the EP402R and MGF505-2R genes. The results indicated that the multiplex real-time qPCR developed in this study can provide a rapid, sensitive and specific diagnostic tool for the differential detection of the ASFV B646L, I177L, MGF505-2R and EP402R genes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 2191 KiB  
Article
Towards a Framework for High-Performance Simulation of Livestock Disease Outbreak: A Case Study of Spread of African Swine Fever in Vietnam
by Linh Manh Pham, Nikos Parlavantzas, Huy-Ham Le and Quang Hung Bui
Animals 2021, 11(9), 2743; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11092743 - 19 Sep 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2742
Abstract
The spread of disease in livestock is an important research topic of veterinary epidemiology because it provides warnings or advice to organizations responsible for the protection of animal health in particular and public health in general. Disease transmission simulation programs are often deployed [...] Read more.
The spread of disease in livestock is an important research topic of veterinary epidemiology because it provides warnings or advice to organizations responsible for the protection of animal health in particular and public health in general. Disease transmission simulation programs are often deployed with different species, disease types, or epidemiological models, and each research team manages its own set of parameters relevant to their target diseases and concerns, resulting in limited cooperation and reuse of research results. Furthermore, these simulation and decision support tools often require a large amount of computational power, especially for models involving tens of thousands of herds with millions of individuals spread over a large geographical area such as a region or a country. It is a matter of fact that epidemic simulation programs are often heterogeneous, but they often share some common workflows including processing of input data and execution of simulation, as well as storage, analysis, and visualization of results. In this article, we propose a novel architectural framework for simultaneously deploying any epidemic simulation program both on premises and on the cloud to improve performance and scalability. We also conduct some experiments to evaluate the proposed architectural framework on some aspects when applying it to simulate the spread of African swine fever in Vietnam. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 2303 KiB  
Article
Towards Efficient Early Warning: Pathobiology of African Swine Fever Virus “Belgium 2018/1” in Domestic Pigs of Different Age Classes
by Jutta Pikalo, Marie-Eve Schoder, Julia Sehl-Ewert, Angele Breithaupt, Ann Brigitte Cay, Coline Lhoëst, Willem van Campe, Laurent Mostin, Paul Deutschmann, Hanna Roszyk, Martin Beer, Sandra Blome and Marylène Tignon
Animals 2021, 11(9), 2602; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11092602 - 4 Sep 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2203
Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most important and devastating viral diseases in wild boar and domestic pigs worldwide. In the absence of vaccines or treatment options, early clinical detection is crucial and requires a sound knowledge of disease characteristics. To [...] Read more.
African swine fever (ASF) is one of the most important and devastating viral diseases in wild boar and domestic pigs worldwide. In the absence of vaccines or treatment options, early clinical detection is crucial and requires a sound knowledge of disease characteristics. To provide practitioners and state veterinarians with detailed information, the objective of the present study was to characterize the ASF virus (ASFV) isolate “Belgium 2018/1” in subadult and weaning domestic pigs. To this end, two animal trials were performed. Trial A included eight subadult domestic pigs and trial B five weaner pigs. In general, clinical signs and pathological lesions were in line with previous studies utilizing highly virulent ASF genotype II viruses. However, in trial A, four subadult domestic pigs survived and recovered, pointing to an age-dependent outcome. The long-term fate of these survivors remains under discussion and would need further investigation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 5419 KiB  
Article
Modelling the Spatial Distribution of ASF-Positive Wild Boar Carcasses in South Korea Using 2019–2020 National Surveillance Data
by Jun-Sik Lim, Timothée Vergne, Son-Il Pak and Eutteum Kim
Animals 2021, 11(5), 1208; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11051208 - 22 Apr 2021
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3834
Abstract
In September 2019, African swine fever (ASF) was reported in South Korea for the first time. Since then, more than 651 ASF cases in wild boars and 14 farm outbreaks have been notified in the country. Despite the efforts to eradicate ASF among [...] Read more.
In September 2019, African swine fever (ASF) was reported in South Korea for the first time. Since then, more than 651 ASF cases in wild boars and 14 farm outbreaks have been notified in the country. Despite the efforts to eradicate ASF among wild boar populations, the number of reported ASF-positive wild boar carcasses have increased recently. The purpose of this study was to characterize the spatial distribution of ASF-positive wild boar carcasses to identify the risk factors associated with the presence and number of ASF-positive wild boar carcasses in the affected areas. Because surveillance efforts have substantially increased in early 2020, we divided the study into two periods (2 October 2019 to 19 January 2020, and 19 January to 28 April 2020) based on the number of reported cases and aggregated the number of reported ASF-positive carcasses into a regular grid of hexagons of 3-km diameter. To account for imperfect detection of positive carcasses, we adjusted spatial zero-inflated Poisson regression models to the number of ASF-positive wild boar carcasses per hexagon. During the first study period, proximity to North Korea was identified as the major risk factor for the presence of African swine fever virus. In addition, there were more positive carcasses reported in affected hexagons with high habitat suitability for wild boars, low heat load index (HLI), and high human density. During the second study period, proximity to an ASF-positive carcass reported during the first period was the only significant risk factor for the presence of ASF-positive carcasses. Additionally, low HLI and elevation were associated with an increased number of ASF-positive carcasses reported in the affected hexagons. Although the proportion of ASF-affected hexagons increased from 0.06 (95% credible interval (CrI): 0.05–0.07) to 0.09 (95% CrI: 0.08–0.10), the probability of reporting at least one positive carcass in ASF-affected hexagons increased from 0.49 (95% CrI: 0.41–0.57) to 0.73 (95% CrI: 0.66–0.81) between the two study periods. These results can be used to further advance risk-based surveillance strategies in the Republic of Korea. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Review

Jump to: Editorial, Research

20 pages, 1813 KiB  
Review
A Review of Environmental Risk Factors for African Swine Fever in European Wild Boar
by Hannes Bergmann, Katja Schulz, Franz J. Conraths and Carola Sauter-Louis
Animals 2021, 11(9), 2692; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11092692 - 14 Sep 2021
Cited by 36 | Viewed by 6016
Abstract
A detailed understanding of environmental risk factors for African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar will be not only essential for risk assessments but also for timely and spatially informed allocation of resources in order to manage wild boar-targeted ASF control measures efficiently. [...] Read more.
A detailed understanding of environmental risk factors for African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar will be not only essential for risk assessments but also for timely and spatially informed allocation of resources in order to manage wild boar-targeted ASF control measures efficiently. Here, we review currently known environmental risk factors that can influence the occurrence of ASF virus infection in wild boar when compared to disease occurrence in wild boar of a non-exposed reference scenario. Accordingly, the exposure of wild boar to environmental risk factors related to (1) climate, (2) land cover, (3) human activity, (4) wild boar and (5) ASF were evaluated. As key environmental risk factors in this review, increased ASF occurrence in wild boar was associated with seasonal patterns, forest coverage, presence of water, human presence, farming activities, wild boar density and ASF nearness. The review highlights inconsistencies in some of these risk factor associations with disease detection in space and time and may provide valuable insights for the investigation of ASF transmission dynamics. The examined risk information was applied to consider potential improvements of the ASF control strategy in wild boar regarding disease surveillance, hunting, wild boar carcass searches and ASF barrier implementation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue African Swine Fever – Knowledge, Theses, Facts)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-7
Back to TopTop