Porcine Parvovirus - Clinical Signs

Clinical Signs

Acute infection of postnatal pigs, including pregnant dams that subsequently develop reproductive failure, is usually subclinical. However, in young pigs and probably in older breeding stock as well, the virus replicates extensively and is found in many tissues and organs with a high mitotic index. Viral antigen is especially concentrated in lymphoid tissues (Fig. 3A, B). Many pigs, irrespective of age or sex, have a transient, usually mild, leukopenia sometime within 10 days after initial exposure to the virus. PPV and other structurally similar viruses have been identified in the feces of pigs with diarrhea. However, there is no experimental evidence to suggest that PPV either replicates extensively in the intestinal crypt epithelium or causes enteric disease as do parvoviruses of several other species. PPV also has been isolated from pigs with lesions described as vesiclelike. The etiologic role of PPV in such lesions has not been clearly defined.

The major and usually only clinical response to infection with PPV is maternal reproductive failure. Pathologic sequelae depend mainly on when exposure occurs during gestation. Dams may return to estrus, fail to farrow despite being anestrus, farrow few pigs per litter, or farrow a large proportion of mummified fetuses. All can reflect embryonic or fetal death or both. The only outward sign may be a decrease in maternal abdominal girth when fetuses die at midgestation or later and their associated fluids are resorbed. Other manifestations of maternal reproductive failure, namely, infertility, abortion, stillbirth, neonatal death, and reduced neonatal vitality, also have been ascribed to infection with PPV. These are normally only a minor component of the disease. The presence of mummified fetuses in a litter can prolong both gestation and the farrowing interval. Either may result in stillbirth of apparently normal littermates, whether or not they are infected.

There is no evidence that either fertility or libido of boars is altered by infection with PPV.