Phylogeographic analysis of the 2000 2002 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in Argentina

GUSTAVO SEBASTIÁN CABANNE; ANDRÉS MAXIMILIANO PEREZ; GUIDO A KÖNIG; LUIS RODRIGUEZ; BÁRBARA P BRITO; CLAUDIA PEREZ BERASCOCHEA

Infection, Genetics and Evolution

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 vol. 41 p. 93 - 99

1567-1348

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly transmissible disease of hooved livestock. Although FMD has beeneradicated from many countries, economic and social consequences of FMD reintroductions are devastating.After achieving disease eradication, Argentina was affected by a major epidemic in 2000?2002, and within fewmonths, FMD virus spread throughout most of the country and affectedN2500 herds. Available records andviral strains allowed us to assess the origins, spread and progression of this FMD epidemic, which remained uncertain. We used whole genome viral sequences and a continuous phylogeographic diffusion approach, which revealed that the viruses that caused the outbreaks spread fast in different directions from a central area inArgentina. The analysis also suggests that the virus that caused the outbreaks in the year 2000 was differentfrom those found during the 2001 epidemic. To estimate if the approximate overall genetic diversity of thevirus was related to disease transmission, we reconstructed the viral demographic variation in time using Bayesian Skygrid approach and compared it with the epidemic curve and the within-herd transmission rate andshowed that the genetic temporal diversity of the virus was associated with the increasing number of outbreaksin the exponential phase of the epidemic. Results here provide new evidence of how the disease entered andspread throughout the country. We further demonstrate that genetic data collected during a FMD epidemiccan be informative indicators of the progression of an ongoing epidemic.