Serological responses after vaccination of growing pigs with foot-and-mouth disease trivalent (type O, A and Asia1) vaccine

Korea experienced its fifth Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak (type O) since 1934 from November 2010 to April 2011. The Korean government initiated emergency vaccination for all FMD-susceptible domestic animals in December 2010 using type O FMD vaccines. Starting in September 2011, trivalent FMD vaccines (types O, A, and Asia1) were used for the vaccination of all animals. This study was performed to identify the appropriate time for FMD vaccination in growing pigs when vaccination is applied only once (at either 8 weeks or 12 weeks of age). Seroprevalences from growing pigs under different vaccination regimens (once or twice) were also studied. A total of 526 growing pigs on 7 farms were used in this study. This study showed that the vaccination of growing pigs at both 8 and 12 weeks of age resulted in higher seroprevalences (97.5% in type O, 92.3% in type A and 99.4% in type Asia1) than did a single vaccination at 8 weeks of age (86.7% in type O, 88.0% in type A and 93.0% in type Asia1) (P< 0.05). Pigs vaccinated once at 8 weeks of age showed much higher seroprevalences than pigs vaccinated once at 12 weeks of age (60.9% in type O, 62.8% in type A and 77.6% in Asia1, respectively) (P< 0.05).