Impact of dietary spray-dried bovine plasma addition on pigs infected with porcine epidemic diarrhea virus

Duffy, Mark A; Chen, Qi; Zhang, Jianqiang; Halbur, Patrick G; Opriessnig, Tanja

In the two pigs that were euthanized due to welfare reasons, in addition to the standard set of enteric tissues, sections of liver, lung, spleen, tonsil, heart, and kidney were also collected and assessed to rule out any concurrent systemic infection. One of these two pigs had moderate diffuse atrophic enteritis associated with PEDV antigen as determined by immunohistochemical stains (score 2). This pig also had the highest amount of PEDV RNA measured (log 10 9.5 genomic copies per fecal swab at dpi 6 and Figure 2 . Mean group anti-PEDV IgA ELISA S/P ratios ± SEM at days 0, 7, and 14 after PEDV inoculation (dpi) in the different treatment groups and number of positive pigs/total number of pigs in the group for each day. The results of the two pigs that were killed on dpi 11 and 13 were included at dpi 14. An S/P ratio greater than 0.13 was considered positive. Different superscripts ( A,B ) indicate significantly different means at a given day. Statistical analysis was performed by one-way ANOVA followed by pairwise testing using the Tukey-Kramer adjustment if P < 0.05. The statistical software used was JMP Pro 11. The number of ELISA positive pigs per total number of pigs per group is listed next to each group mean. log 10 8.9 at dpi 11) when it was killed. The other pig had its peak PEDV shedding at dpi 6 (log 10 6.3 PEDV genomic copies), but its shedding decreased to log 10 5.6 genomic copies by dpi 13. No other lesions were seen in these two pigs. The remaining pigs were necropsied at the scheduled time at dpi 14, and lesions or PEDV antigen were not seen in any of these pigs suggesting that the PEDV infection and associated lesions had resolved.