ThePigSite.com Swine Bibliography Centre is brought to you in association with Merial Support that keeps you updated for FREE

Bulletin No. 21 - Spring 2005

Proceedings of the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference, 2004 , 61-66

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) has been challenging the swine industry for almost 15 years now. So much has been learnt about PRRSV but many aspects of how to manage and eliminate this puzzling virus remain unclear. The primary objective of the National Pork Board (NPB) is to promote cooperation between all protagonists of the North American swine industry for an improved use of both the intellectual and financial resources available. The NPB provides funding to two main categories of research, i.e. research that clearly contributes to the management of PRRSV infection (vaccination, persistent infection, elimination of the virus) and discovery projects that explore other scientific fields. Several projects funded by the NPB are reported in this paper, e.g. the determination of serum protein profile of PRRSV infection in order to distinguish between non-infected, acutely infected and persistently infected pigs, the development of a novel sampling technique for detection of PRRSV by PCR, the identification of parts of PRRSV genome related and unrelated to virulence using a pathogenic infectious clone of the virus, the development of an interactive PRRSV sequence database, a pilot project to determine whether a regional control of PRRS in one selected area of Minnesota is feasible, etc.. Significant progress is expected in the next years.