Determinants of early foot-and-mouth disease virus dynamics in pigs

This paper provides a quantitative description of the early infectious process in pigs experimentally infected with foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), obtained by dose-dependent, time course studies of viral load in serum. Pigs were inoculated by the intravenous or intradermal/subcutaneous route with FMDV and housed together in groups or individually. The effects of dose, inoculation route and exposure intensity on the replication of FMDV in vivo and the development of disease were studied. It was shown that the higher the dose, the shorter was the time to the start of active viraemia and to the onset of clinical signs. Exposure intensity and housing conditions influenced the viral dynamics of FMDV. Increasing the exposure intensity, by increasing the number of infected pigs housed together, had the effect of synchronizing the infection and reducing the variance in the start of active viraemia. Increasing the number of pigs housed together also increased the interaction between the pigs and the activity of individual pigs, which had the effect of shortening the time to the onset of clinical signs such as vesicle formation. Intradermal inoculation was more effective than intravenous inoculation for transmitting FMDV to pigs, resulting in shorter times to the start of active viraemia and in higher clinical scores.