Starting this month, state-by-state pathogen trends will be included in the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report that is funded by the Swine Health Information Center and is a collaborative project among multiple veterinary diagnostic labs, to aggregate swine diagnostic data.

Prepared by Daniel Linhares and Giovani Trevisan at Iowa State University, the DSDMR describes dynamics of pathogen detection by Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory-performed assays over time, specimen, age group and geographical area. Data included are from the ISU VDL, South Dakota State University ADRDL, University of Minnesota VDL and Kansas State University VDL.

With this report, veterinarians and producers will know if porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae or potentially other pathogens are moving up or down in states being analyzed. Identifying these trends is just the first step to further analysis of the data to understand the reasons for the trends and, thus, to help manage them.

This project includes states where DSDMR participant VDLs are located and those having a swine inventory equal to or greater than 2 million pigs. Authors are using the percentage of polymerase chain reaction-positive submissions by state then applying smoothing models to forecast results for a 12-month period. This report uses predicted values of percentage-positive results by PCR (by pathogen, month and state) which were then subtracted from observed values, generating residue values. Then, residues were scanned by an exponential weighted moving average model to monitor and generate the changes from the expected baseline. The baseline and monitoring are constructed based on each state's data with no comparison across states.

Exponential weighted moving average findings are reported as changes in standard deviations from the expected baseline. Changes from baseline are reported as:

Information for each state regarding the change from baseline, the number of total, positive submissions and percent of positive results were recovered from the models and transferred to Microsoft Power BI for geographic visualization. The dashboards for state-by-state pathogen trending can be accessed on the SHIC website at Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report or by visiting Iowa State University's site for the Swine Disease Reporting System.

As the world deals with the COVID-19 pandemic, SHIC continues to focus efforts on prevention, preparedness and response to novel and emerging swine disease for the benefit of U.S. swine health. SHIC is funded by America's pork producers to fulfill its mission to protect and enhance the health of the U.S. swine herd. For more information, visit the SHIC website or contact Paul Sundberg, SHIC executive director.

Source: Swine Health Information Center, which is solely responsible for the information provided, and wholly owns the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.