Trends in Foot and Mouth Disease Surveillance

ALEJANDRA CAPOZZO

Garmish-Partenkirchen

Encuentro; Science and Disease Surveillance Review for the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency`s Biological Threat Reduction and Cooperative engagement programs; 2011

US Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious disease of cloven-hoofed animals that causes severe losses to both livestock and the economy. Because of the magnitude of economic harm it can cause, FMD demands hard work on surveillance, response (surge), and recovery. In FMD-free areas, the first line of defense relies on reporting of suspicious cases by personnel handling or observing susceptible animals such as farmers, technicians, farm hands and veterinarians. This brings out the first obstacle for detecting FMDV: farmers and cattle producers are not trained to recognize FMD and even very few veterinarians have ever observed FMD lesions. Moreover, FMD is sub clinical in small ruminants or may look like foot rot. As FMD can look like other vesicular diseases, laboratory testing is mandatory for confirmation. Several obstacles need to be addressed to ensure field systems to be efficient and effective diagnostics to be available and strategically deployed prior to an FMD outbreak. This presentation overviews available molecular and serological assays, in house or commercial, that are applied for the different surveillance situations: detection of FMD, viral identification, vaccine matching, differentiation between infected or vaccinated animals (DIVA), vaccine potency testing (efficacy) and those to perform post-outbreak surveillance. Discussion will be focused on the range of application of the different tests, summarizing the most relevant diagnostics that are available now or under late steps of development.