Inguinal lymph node sample collected by minimally invasive sampler helps to accurately diagnose ASF in dead pigs without necropsy

Abstract

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious hemorrhagic and transboundary animal disease, and it threatens global food security. A full necropsy to harvest the sample matrices for diagnosis in the farm may lead to contamination of the premises and directly threaten to the herds. In the present study, we compared the ASFV loads of the common samples that can be collected without necropsy. The unmatched nasal, throat, rectal samples were randomly taken using cotton swabs, and inguinal lymph node samples were collected by the minimally invasive samplers from the dead pigs of an ASF field outbreak farm. The ASFV loads of the samples were detected by qPCR and the results suggested that the overall ASFV nucleic acids levels of inguinal lymph node samples were higher than the swabs. What's more, sets of matched nasal swabs, rectal swabs, throat swabs, inguinal lymph nodes, serums, spleens and lungs samples were collected from 15 dead ASFV naturally infected pigs. Similarly, the results showed that inguinal lymph node samples, together with serum, spleen and lungs samples, contained more ASFV nucleic acids than the swabs. Our findings demonstrated that the inguinal lymph node collected by minimally invasive sampler is an ideal tissue for diagnosing ASFV infection in dead pigs without necropsy.

Keywords: African swine fever; diagnosis; inguinal lymph node; minimally invasive sampler; qPCR.