Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Serotype O Phylodynamics: Genetic Variability Associated with Epidemiological Factors in Pakistan

Abstract

One of the most challenging aspects of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) control is the high genetic variability of the FMD virus (FMDV). In endemic settings such as the Indian subcontinent, this variability has resulted in the emergence of pandemic strains that have spread widely and caused devastating outbreaks in disease-free areas. In countries trying to control and eradicate FMD using vaccination strategies, the constantly evolving and wide diversity of field FMDV strains is an obstacle for identifying vaccine strains that are successful in conferring protection against infection with field viruses. Consequently, quantitative knowledge on the factors that are associated with variability of the FMDV is prerequisite for preventing and controlling FMD in the Indian subcontinent. A hierarchical linear model was used to assess the association between time, space, host species and the genetic variability of serotype O FMDV using viruses collected in Pakistan from 2005 to 2011. Significant (P<0.05) amino acid and nucleotide variations were associated with spatial distance, but not with differences in host species, which is consistent with the frequent multi-species infection of this serotype O FMDV. Results from this study will contribute to the understanding of FMDV variability and to the design of FMD control strategies in Pakistan. Viruses sequenced here also provide the earliest reported isolate from the Pan Asia II(ANT-10) sublineage, which has caused several outbreaks in the Middle East and spread into Europe (Bulgaria) and Africa (Libya).

An Integrative Analysis of Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Virus Carriers in Vietnam Achieved Through Targeted Surveillance and Molecular Epidemiology

“…However, analysis of VP1 will only cover approximately 10% of the coding sequence or 7.5% of the genome (Carrillo et al., ). While it has been shown that VP1 sequence variation has a high correlation to P1 sequence variation (Brito et al., ), serological response and outbreak epidemiology (Perez et al., ), to increase sequence resolution and to attain more detailed information regarding relationships between isolates, increased sequence resolution attained by whole‐genome coverage as reported in a few recent studies (Le et al., ; Abdul‐Hamid et al., ; Zheng et al., ), gives access to more detailed information regarding relationships between isolates. Whole‐genome sequencing of the isolates described in this study is currently underway in our laboratory.…”

Evidence for multiple recombination events within foot‐and‐mouth disease viruses circulating in West Eurasia

“…Previous phylogenetic studies on FMDVs circulating in the West Eurasian region have largely focused on genome regions encoding the structural proteins, which determine the virus serotype (Brito et al, ; Jamal et al, ; Knowles et al, ; Waheed et al, ). In contrast, the present study has compared near‐complete genome sequences of FMDVs representative of the three serotypes that each circulate in this region and this analysis has provided evidence for multiple inter‐serotypic recombination events.…”

“…Epidemics emerging within this region frequently involve multiple, neighbouring, countries. In recent years, the boundaries of the epidemics due to strains of O-PanAsia (Brito et al, 2013;Brito, Rodriguez, Hammond, Pinto, & Perez, 2017;Jamal et al, 2011c), A-Iran05 (Jamal et al, 2011a;Knowles et al, 2009) and Asia-1 (a new lineage designated as Group-VII (Sindh-08), Jamal et al, 2011b) have been seen to extend from Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran through to Turkey. In addition, there have been occasional short incursions of these viruses into Central Asia and the Middle-East, including Israel.…”

Genetic diversity and comparison of diagnostic tests for characterization of foot‐and‐mouth disease virus strains from Pakistan 2008–2012

“…A broad genetic diversity of FMDV strains circulating in Pakistan and neighbouring countries has been described (Brito, Rodriguez, Hammond, Pinto, & Perez, ; Brito et al., ; FMDWRL; Ullah et al., ; Waheed et al., ; Jamal et al., ; Jamal et al., ). FMDV serotypes A, O and Asia‐1 are endemic in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India and China, resulting in high annual economic losses to the livestock production system (Jamal et al., ; Kesy, ).…”