Investigating the immunological response in pigs injected with inactivated streptococcus suis

Abstract

Streptococcus suis is an important swine pathogen which is capable to cause systemic infections in human. Vietnam is the second top country with highest number of reported human infection cases. The risks for human infection are either occupational exposure to infected pigs or consumption of uncooked pork product. To date, commercial vaccine against this pathogen is not available in not only Vietnam but also around the world due to the diversity of geographical distribution of virulent strains. Thus an effective autogenous vaccine against S. suis in pigs could be an alternative for disease prevention measurement in pigs. Given this situation, the present study aims to investigate the immunogenicity of piglets when being introduce with highly virulent local-isolated S. suis bacterin. The bacterial strain was inactivated using formalin with the addition of Freund’s adjuvants as immunological stimulator. The results show that the bacterin induces high immunological response in piglets while maintains the weight growth of piglets. The finding of this study provides a potential to use the local isolated S. suis as bacterin for autogenous vaccine development given the situation in Vietnam. Keywords: Streptococcus suis Pigs Immunological response Autogenous vacci