The pig: a model for human infectious diseases

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Abstract

An animal model to study human infectious diseases should accurately reproduce the various aspects of disease. Domestic pigs ( Sus scrofa domesticus) are closely related to humans in terms of anatomy, genetics and physiology, and represent an excellent animal model to study various microbial infectious diseases. Indeed, experiments in pigs are much more likely to be predictive of therapeutic treatments in humans than experiments in rodents. In this review, we highlight the numerous advantages of the pig model for infectious disease research and vaccine development and document a few examples of human microbial infectious diseases for which the use of pigs as animal models has contributed to the acquisition of new knowledge to improve both animal and human health.

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Swine as models in biomedical research and toxicology testing.

M M Swindle, A. Makin, A J Herron … (2011)

Swine are considered to be one of the major animal species used in translational research, surgical models, and procedural training and are increasingly being used as an alternative to the dog or monkey as the choice of nonrodent species in preclinical toxicologic testing of pharmaceuticals. There are unique advantages to the use of swine in this setting given that they share with humans similar anatomic and physiologic characteristics involving the cardiovascular, urinary, integumentary, and digestive systems. However, the investigator needs to be familiar with important anatomic, histopathologic, and clinicopathologic features of the laboratory pig and minipig in order to put background lesions or xenobiotically induced toxicologic changes in their proper perspective and also needs to consider specific anatomic differences when using the pig as a surgical model. Ethical considerations, as well as the existence of significant amounts of background data, from a regulatory perspective, provide further support for the use of this species in experimental or pharmaceutical research studies. It is likely that pigs and minipigs will become an increasingly important animal model for research and pharmaceutical development applications.

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Design of a High Density SNP Genotyping Assay in the Pig Using SNPs Identified and Characterized by Next Generation Sequencing Technology

António Ramos, Richard P M A Crooijmans, Nabeel Affara … (2009)

Background The dissection of complex traits of economic importance to the pig industry requires the availability of a significant number of genetic markers, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This study was conducted to discover several hundreds of thousands of porcine SNPs using next generation sequencing technologies and use these SNPs, as well as others from different public sources, to design a high-density SNP genotyping assay. Methodology/Principal Findings A total of 19 reduced representation libraries derived from four swine breeds (Duroc, Landrace, Large White, Pietrain) and a Wild Boar population and three restriction enzymes (AluI, HaeIII and MspI) were sequenced using Illumina's Genome Analyzer (GA). The SNP discovery effort resulted in the de novo identification of over 372K SNPs. More than 549K SNPs were used to design the Illumina Porcine 60K+SNP iSelect Beadchip, now commercially available as the PorcineSNP60. A total of 64,232 SNPs were included on the Beadchip. Results from genotyping the 158 individuals used for sequencing showed a high overall SNP call rate (97.5%). Of the 62,621 loci that could be reliably scored, 58,994 were polymorphic yielding a SNP conversion success rate of 94%. The average minor allele frequency (MAF) for all scorable SNPs was 0.274. Conclusions/Significance Overall, the results of this study indicate the utility of using next generation sequencing technologies to identify large numbers of reliable SNPs. In addition, the validation of the PorcineSNP60 Beadchip demonstrated that the assay is an excellent tool that will likely be used in a variety of future studies in pigs.

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Effect of human rotavirus vaccine on severe diarrhea in African infants.

Shabir Madhi, Nigel Cunliffe, Duncan Steele … (2010)

Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe gastroenteritis among young children worldwide. Data are needed to assess the efficacy of the rotavirus vaccine in African children. We conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial in South Africa (3166 infants; 64.1% of the total) and Malawi (1773 infants; 35.9% of the total) to evaluate the efficacy of a live, oral rotavirus vaccine in preventing severe rotavirus gastroenteritis. Healthy infants were randomly assigned in a 1:1:1 ratio to receive two doses of vaccine (in addition to one dose of placebo) or three doses of vaccine--the pooled vaccine group--or three doses of placebo at 6, 10, and 14 weeks of age. Episodes of gastroenteritis caused by wild-type rotavirus during the first year of life were assessed through active follow-up surveillance and were graded with the use of the Vesikari scale. A total of 4939 infants were enrolled and randomly assigned to one of the three groups; 1647 infants received two doses of the vaccine, 1651 infants received three doses of the vaccine, and 1641 received placebo. Of the 4417 infants included in the per-protocol efficacy analysis, severe rotavirus gastroenteritis occurred in 4.9% of the infants in the placebo group and in 1.9% of those in the pooled vaccine group (vaccine efficacy, 61.2%; 95% confidence interval, 44.0 to 73.2). Vaccine efficacy was lower in Malawi than in South Africa (49.4% vs. 76.9%); however, the number of episodes of severe rotavirus gastroenteritis that were prevented was greater in Malawi than in South Africa (6.7 vs. 4.2 cases prevented per 100 infants vaccinated per year). Efficacy against all-cause severe gastroenteritis was 30.2%. At least one serious adverse event was reported in 9.7% of the infants in the pooled vaccine group and in 11.5% of the infants in the placebo group. Human rotavirus vaccine significantly reduced the incidence of severe rotavirus gastroenteritis among African infants during the first year of life. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00241644.) 2010 Massachusetts Medical Society

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Author and article information

Contributors

François Meurens

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Trends Microbiol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Trends Microbiol

Title: Trends in Microbiology

Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.

ISSN (Print): 0966-842X

ISSN (Electronic): 1878-4380

Publication date PMC-release: 5 December 2011

Publication date (Print): January 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 5 December 2011

Volume: 20

Issue: 1

Pages: 50-57

Affiliations

[1 ]Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Unité de Recherche 1282, Infectiologie Animale et Santé Publique, 37380, Nouzilly (Tours), France

[2 ]Institute of Virology and Immunoprophylaxis (IVI), Sensemattstrasse 293, 3147 Mittelhäusern, Switzerland

[3 ]Department of Virology, Parasitology and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Salisburylaan 133, B-9820 Merelbeke, Belgium

[4 ]Food Animal Health Research Program, Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, The Ohio State University, 1680 Madison Avenue, Wooster, OH 44691, USA

[5 ]Vaccine & Infectious Disease Organization, University of Saskatchewan, S7N 5E3 Saskatoon, Canada

Article

Publisher ID: S0966-842X(11)00195-8

DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2011.11.002

PMC ID: 7173122

PubMed ID: 22153753

SO-VID: d75f59b6-a473-490e-ba7d-6d910e50ac49

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Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

The pig: a model for human infectious diseases

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Most cited references 69

Swine as models in biomedical research and toxicology testing.

Design of a High Density SNP Genotyping Assay in the Pig Using SNPs Identified and Characterized by Next Generation Sequencing Technology

Effect of human rotavirus vaccine on severe diarrhea in African infants.

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