Pig Major Acute-Phase Protein and apolipoprotein A-I responses correlate with the clinical course of experimentally induced African Swine Fever and Aujeszky's disease

Abstract

-In the present work, we studied the acute phase protein response after experimental virus infection in pigs. The animals were experimentally infected with African Swine Fever (ASF) or Aujeszky's disease (AD) viruses. The clinical course of ASF infection correlated with increasingly high levels of pig Major Acute-phase Protein (pig-MAP) (mean value of 6 mg/mL on day 6 post infection (p.i.), from 6 to 9 times higher than day 0) and sharp apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I) decrease (mean value of 0.5 mg/mL, from 4 to 10 times lower than day 0 on day 4 p.i.). AD-clinical signs appeared at day 3 p.i., both in vaccinated (moderate clinical signs) and non-vaccinated pigs (severe outcome within 48 h p.i.). Pig-MAP and apo A-I profiles also followed clinical signs (changing from 0.70 mg/mL to around 3 mg/mL and from around 3 mg/mL to 0.96 mg/mL, respectively in non-vaccinated animals), with minor changes in concentration in the vaccinated group. Haptoglobin levels significantly increased in ASF and AD infected animals (mean maximum values of 2.77 and 3.96 mg/mL, respectively). Minor differences for the C-Reactive Protein in the case of ASF were observed, whereas its concentration increased more than 7 times in AD-infection. The albumin level was not modified in either case. The correlation of clinical signs to our data suggests the potential use of pig-MAP and apo A-I in monitoring infections in swine.

Haptoglobin serum concentration is a suitable biomarker to assess the efficacy of a feed additive in pigs

“…This result agrees with those obtained in pigs clinically affected after experimental infection with Aujeszky virus and Aujeszky field cases, where a more sensitive response of haptoglobin changes is observed compared to Pig-MAP (Parra et al, 2006;Carpintero et al, 2007), although, in our case, the magnitude of the increase is lower than the described for these authors. These results are foreseeable because the virulence of a MLV is always lower than the wild virus (Shams, 2005).…”

“…Furthermore, despite the fact that haptoglobin and Pig-MAP seem to correlate in several diseases (Sorensen et al, 2006;Martin de la Fuente et al, 2008), differences in both proteins have been described in viremic pigs subjected to experimental infections with African Swine Fever and Aujeszky disease (Carpintero et al, 2007), or in PRRS and Aujeszky disease field cases (Parra et al, 2006). Our results clearly show that haptoglobin and Pig-MAP also display a different profile in pigs after an Aujeszky MLV or after receiving an immunomodulator that might improve their health status.…”

“…To our knowledge, there is information available about the APP response after challenge with wild type Aujeszky virus (Carpintero et al, 2007) but there is a paucity of information about the serum APPs profile in pigs undergoing standard vaccination programs under field conditions.…”

Longitudinal analysis of acute-phase proteins in saliva in pig farms with different health status

“…Longitudinal studies have been used to assess the evolution of selected APP in serum at specific times during the clinical course of experimentally induced viral diseases such as African Swine Fever and Aujeszky's disease (Carpintero et al, 2007), PRRS (Díaz et al, 2005) and also in bacterial infections with Streptococcus suis (Sorensen et al, 2006), Haemophilus parasuis (Martín de la Fuente et al, 2009) or Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (Lauritzen et al, 2003). Under field conditions, APP have been monitored in pigs during the clinical course of post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS; Grau-Roma et al, 2009) and in pigs with PRRS virus (PRRSv) chronic infections (Asai et al, 1999).…”

Experimental immunology Acute phase protein response in pigs experimentally co-infected with swine influenza virus and Bordetella bronchiseptica

“…The acute phase protein (APP) response to inflammation or infection has been identified in a number of species and consists of alterations to the serum concentrations of several proteins, including APP [1][2][3]. Occurrence and monitoring progression of infection by APP measurements in blood is used extensively in human [4,5].…”