Outbreak of respiratory distress resembling influenza caused by Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae in pigs

摘要

SWINE influenza (Olsen and others 2006) and Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae infection (Gottschalk and Taylor 2006) are described in textbooks as having well defined clinical signs, but signs of the two diseases prove to be indistinguishable in practice. Apathy, reluctance to rise, anorexia, fever, dyspnoea and coughing with variable morbidity and mortality are described for both diseases. This short communication describes the clinical, serological and postmortem findings in an outbreak of respiratory disease resembling swine influenza, but actually due to A pleuropneumoniae, in a pig herd. The herd consisted of 300 sows and 2400 finishing pigs, housed in units of 144 animals in 12 pens. All-in, all-out management was usually practised in each unit, and the farm had recently mixed litters for conducting feed experiments. The herd had a history of being infected with A pleuropneumoniae serotype 2.