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PRRS strain diversity in a European pig production area 14 years after the primary infection
Benoît Gouvars1 Vincent Auvigne2 Tomasz Stadejek3 Eric Sellal4
1. UGPVB, Rennes, France; 2. EKIPAJ, Pozuelo de Alarcon (Madrid), Spain; 3. NVRI, Pulawy, Poland; 4. LSI, Lissieu, France

Introduction References
The porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) 1. Stadejek, T .et al.(2002). J.Gen.Virol. 83, 186-1873
virus is widely distributed over the various pig production areas 2. Mateu, E. et al.(2003). J.Gen.Virol. 84, 529-534
worldwide. 3. Stadejek, T. et al. (2006). J. Gen. Virol. 87, 1835-1841
The diversity of the American PRRS strains has been well docu- 4. Cay, AB.et al.(2006). Proc.19th IPVS Vol.2, 9
mented. That of the European strains has been described only 5. Albina E. et al. (1998). Vet. Res. 54, 1.
recently (1, 2). The aim of this study was to describe the diversity
Acknowledgements
of the PRRS strains present in a European pig production area
that was contaminated in 1991 and has around 7000 pig farms. Intervet and Merial are acknowledged for their financial support.
.
Materials and Methods
The study carried out used the blood samples of piglets (9, 12
and 15 weeks of age) of breeder-fattener farms, taken over a Figure 1. Phylogenetic tree based on the ORF5 sequence of the strains
period of 4 months (December 2004 to March 2005). The farms studied.
were known to be infected and had or had not observed signs
that could be attributed to PRRS (in breeding animals and grow-
ing pigs). After screening the serum samples using a PCR kit
allowing the detection of European and US strains of the PRRS
Virus (Adiavet®PRRS), amplification and sequencing of ORF7
and ORF5 genes were carried out for each farm (one sample per
farm). Sequence alignment and analysis was carried out using
CLUSTALW (1.82), Lasergene (DNAStar) and PHYLIP 3.67 program
packages. For the comparative analysis, selected sequences
representing the full range of European genotype diversity were
used.

Results
In total 51 ORF7 and 46 ORF5 were obtained. All sequences
obtained were of the European genotype. The identity with the
Lelystad strain was 91 to 100% for ORF7 and 82 to 98% for ORF5.
These sequences were also highly similar to the FR/IV4A strain,
isolated 14 years earlier at the time of the introduction of PRRSV
in the region (Fig. 1).
No clusters were found in association with the clinical signs
observed or with the geographical proximity of the farms.
Discussion
The results of this study underline the very high genetic identity,
both between the isolated strains and compared to the Lelystad
strain. This finding is rather unique considering the genetic
diversity in many European countries (3,4), where the hetero-
geneity of the strains is much higher. In the region studied, the
initial outbreak occurred in 1991 with a strain closely related to
the Lelystad strain (5). It can be concluded that the great major-
ity of the farms in this region were infected at the time of the ori-
ginal outbreak or later but with the strains originating from the
original introduction. Only in 4 farms the strains were found to
be unrelated. Since 1991, no new strains have been introduced
and the original strains seem to have undergone a ‘natural drift’.

Proceedings of the 21st IPVS Congress, Vancouver, Canada – July 18-21, 2010 500