Airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease in pigs: evaluation and optimisation of instrumentation and techniques.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) can be transmitted in a variety of ways, one of which is through virus exhaled into the air by infected livestock. It is clear that where there is close contact there will be a range of possible mechanisms for the transmission of disease from animal to animal, including the airborne route if simple barriers between livestock exist. In transmission of FMD over longer distances, airborne transmission represents a significant challenge to the veterinary services in that the mechanism is essentially uncontrollable if the primary source of the disease is not contained.

Detection of foot-and-mouth disease viral sequences in clinical specimens and ethyleneimine-inactivated preparations by the polymerase chain reaction.

The polymerase chain reaction method (PCR) has been applied to the diagnosis of foot-and-mouth disease viral RNA in tissues and, particularly, oesophageal-pharyngeal fluid (probang) samples from cattle. Using primer sets which corresponded to conserved regions of the VP1 sequence of the viral genome, it was possible to amplify sequences regardless of the serotype/strain of the virus. In comparison with infectivity assays, the PCR was generally more sensitive although there were a number of examples where only infectivity was detectable.