Aujeszky’s disease in hunting dogs after the ingestion of wild boar raw meat in Sicily (Italy): clinical, diagnostic and phylogenetic features

Abstract

Background Aujeszky's disease is caused by Suid Herpes Virus-1 and species belonging to the genus Sus scrofa are the main reservoir hosts. This virus, however, is capable of infecting and causing severe disease, with an almost constant fatal outcome in other species, both domestic and wild (carnivores, monogastric herbivores and ruminants). Moreover, the possibility of transmission to humans has been demonstrated. This study reports and describes the clinical, diagnostic, pathological and phylogenetic aspects of two cases of Aujeszky's disease in two hunting dogs following the ingestion of infected wild boar raw meat. These cases are contextualized in the province of Messina (Sicily), where a high prevalence of Aujeszky's disease has been recorded (average of 12,20% in the period 2010–2019) in farmed pig, and with evidence of spread to other species. A severe outbreak in cattle has recently been reported in these areas. Nevertheless, cases of Aujeszky's disease in dogs are rarely reported and this study represents the first well-documented report in this species in Sicily. Case presentation After a wild boar hunt, two dogs showed neurological symptoms and intense itching unresponsive to therapy. Diagnosis of Aujeszky's disease was made based on clinical suspicion, anamnestic information and confirmed by the isolation of the virus from the brain of both dogs. In addition, molecular typing, sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the Real-Time PCR products were performed. The sequences studied were placed in the Italian Clade 1 along with the sequences obtained from wild boars and hunting dogs from Italy and France. Conclusions The finding of this disease in non-natural hosts in Sicilian multi-host epidemiological contexts suggests that the risk of inter-species transmission is concrete and that attention should be paid to developing disease control programs in these territories. The data obtained from genome sequencing of the two SuHV-1 isolates contribute to the enrichment of the GenBank with unknown sequences and the phylogenetic analysis implementation.

Detection of Pseudorabies in Dogs in Slovenia between 2006 and 2020: From Clinical and Diagnostic Features to Molecular Epidemiology

“…Together with the study by Kotnik et al [41], the present study is only the second report of PRV infection in dogs from Slovenia in over 30 years. All cases indicate direct interspecies transmission, similar to previously published results from other countries [10,15,23,24,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]37], confrming the still existing risk of PR and supporting the need for national control programmes in the wild boar population for this disease.…”

“…Te presence of uncontrollable facial pruritus, a pathognomonic sign of PR in nonnatural hosts was present in all Slovenian cases. According to Pejsak and Truszczynski [44], facial and neck pruritus associated with self-mutilation occurs in 17.8% to 52% of all PR cases described in dogs [16,45] and is restricted to the face and neck area [15,27,31,37]. In all described Slovenian PRV cases, infection occurred via the oral or respiratory mucosa, which was also confrmed by the anamnestic data.…”

“…Two studies published in 2005 and 2014 on serological surveys in Slovenian wild boar showed that PRV circulates with a prevalence of 26% to 45.1% and poses a risk to other susceptible hosts [20,22]. PRV infections in dogs have been previously reported in Europe, the United States, Japan, and China [6,10,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In most cases where PRV has been reported in dogs, the dogs became infected directly by ingestion or indirectly by inhalation, or via small wounds from contact with infected pigs [1].…”

Prevalence of infectious reproductive diseases in sows from Tolima-Colombia

“…[3] and PLHV [6]. In the case of PRV, nervous tissues are more suitable for diagnosis because of the limited circulation of the virus in the blood, which may explain the negative results in the present study [5,11].…”

Serological Survey of Aujeszky’s Disease in Wild Boar from Southeastern France

“…However, despite the successful application of this eradication program, the continuous emergence of new outbreaks involving wild boar is still anticipated [ 11 ]. The presence of ADV in wild boar populations represents not only a risk of reintroduction into pig herds, but also a real threat to wild and domestic mammals [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. In France, the complete eradication of AD was achieved in 2008 for all of mainland France.…”