Lethal Virus That Killed Hundred of Pigs in China Spreads to US

The disease that left a whopping 768 dead pigs floating in a river in China is believed to have originated in the Anhui Province of China and may have evolved from a virus seen in bats.

A team of researchers led by X.J. Meng, at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech have helped identify the origin and possible evolution of an emerging swine virus with high mortality rates that has already spread to at least 17 states.

"The virus typically only affects nursery pigs and has many similarities with transmissible gastroenteritis virus of swine," said Meng, who is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology. "There is currently no vaccine against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in the United States. Although some vaccines are in use in Asia, we do not know whether they would work against the U.S. strains of the virus."

The researchers found that not only that the three U.S. strains of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus are most closely related to the Chinese strains of the virus, but also that the U.S. strains likely diverged two or three years ago following an outbreak of a particularly virulent strain in China.

"The ongoing outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in humans from countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula and the historical deadly nature of the 2002 outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus create further anxiety about the emergency of PEDV in the U.S. [because of] the lack of scientific information about the origin and evolution of this emerging coronavirus," writes Yao-Wei Huang, the first author of the paper and a former research assistant professor at the veterinary college who is now a professor at Zhejiang Univ. in Hangzhou, China.

They published their findings on the "Origin, Evolution, and Genotyping of Emergent Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus Strains in the United States" abstract in the Oct. 15 issue of the American Academy of Microbiology's journal, mBio.