Page 4 - National Poultry Newspaper

A quiet but high achiever, Dr Conny Turni was well supported and highly regarded by Pork CRC back in the day. More recently APL has assisted in her ongoing out- standing porcine respiratory research.
Having solved the disease mystery, the research team at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food In- novation is now working to develop on-farm tests and treatments for the new infection.
“We had been stor- ing isolates from some diseased pigs but hadn’t been able to identify them until a couple of years ago when we had two masters students work on them, and they determined that a num- ber of these isolates rep- resented a new bacterial species,” Dr Turni said.
Continuing research into g. australis has led to a diagnostic assay being validated, which is testing 26 g. austra- lis isolates, 15 reference strains and one field iso- late of a. pleuropneumo- niae, 16 reference strains for another bacterium pasteurella multocida that causes respiratory disease, and another 47 strains and field isolates representing 12 genera and 26 species of similar bacteria.
Breathtaking research led by a quiet achiever
Cant Comment by BRENDON CANT
QUEENSLAND re- searchers have discov- ered that a previously unrecognised bacte- rium is responsible for signs of lung disease found in pig carcasses, rather than a similar internationally recog- nised infection the ani- mals had been vacci- nated against.
there could only be two possibilities – either the vaccines weren’t work- ing or there was another pathogen at work caus- ing a similar disease and in some way interfering with the efficacy of the vaccines.
australis causes clinical signs in pigs on-farm at 12 to 20 weeks of age, with some cases being fatal.
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Page 4 – Australian Pork Newspaper, May 2020
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Several years ago it was noticed that lesions, abscesses and pleurisy found in the lungs of pigs at abattoirs looked very similar to those as- sociated with a known serious pig respiratory disease – porcine pleuro- pneumonia.
If a producer decided to sell the animals under- weight, the losses could be as high as $A60 per pig.
However, the research- ers couldn’t continue the formal process of de- scribing and naming the new species because the discovery occurred at the same time that the clos- est known relative to the new organism haemophi- lus parasuis was being renamed glaesserella by US researchers.
To determine the prev- alence of g. australis, the researchers sampled lungs with lesions, ab- scesses and pleurisy from 23 farms in NSW, 43 in Queensland, one in South Australia and 27 in Victoria.
This is caused by the bacterium actinobacil- lus pleuropneumoniae, which was assumed to be the culprit despite the fact the animals had been fully vaccinated.
With Australian Pork Limited support QAAFI researchers discovered one new species and a potential new species of lung-infecting bacteria, which put to rest con- cerns that current vac- cines weren’t working.
Once the new genus was formally recognised in 2019, the QAAFI researchers could an- nounce glaesserella aus- tralis as a new species.
This data is still being analysed.
Porcine pleuropneumo- nia is a major economic disease that causes ani- mals to lose weight at a critical growth stage.
University of Queens- land project leader Dr Conny Turni said when the unexplained signs of disease were found, it was in the same growth period in which porcine pleuropneumonia caused by actinobacillus pleuro- pneumoniae occurs.
According to Dr Turni, g. australis is associated with two disease sce- narios.
For future on-farm diagnosis, the QAAFI team is investigating the potential for nasal and tonsil swabbing to see if this will detect the bacte- rium in live pigs, which would simplify control and management of the disease.
Previous research has shown animal average daily gain can drop by up to 20 percent until halted by treatment, with the animal requiring 20 or so days to recover.
One is where there are no apparent clinical signs of disease on-farm, but at the abattoir the carcass has lesions and abscesses in the lungs that are very similar to those caused by actinobacillus pleuro- pneumoniae.
The project is also ex- amining methods to de- termine the antimicro- bial sensitivity profile of g. australis isolates to help the industry develop targeted, effective treat- ment programs.
This leads to a consid- erable increase in pro- duction costs.
However, the pigs are vaccinated for this, so
In the other scenario, g.