Swine vesicular disease, studies on pathogenesis, diagnosis, and epizootiology: A review

Swine vesicular disease (SVD) is a contagious viral disease of swine. It ca uses vesicular lesions indistinguishable from those observed of foot-and-mo uth disease. Infection with SVD virus (SVDV) can lead to viraemia within 1 day and can produce clinical signs 2 days after a pig has come into contact with infected pigs or a virus-contaminated environment. Virus can be detec ted 3.5 hours after infection using immunohistochemistry. In these in vitro studies, this technique was superior to in-situ hybridization, In SVDV-inf ected tissues, however, more infected cells were positive using insitu hybr idization, and these were already seen 4.5 hours after infection. For serol ogical diagnosis of SVD several new enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELI SA's) have been developed. The newest ELISAs, based on monoclonal antibodie s, are superior to the previous tests. The new tests produce fewer less fal se-negative results and enable large-scale serological screening. In screen ing programmes a small percentage of false positive reactors have been dete cted. The cause of these false-positive reactions has not been identified, though infections with human Coxsackie B5 virus can be excluded.