RVC researchers celebrate PPR virus success

Researchers from the RVC are celebrating progress made in trying to eradicate a deadly gastrointestinal and respiratory disease of sheep, goats and wildlife.

Key findings to date have shed light on the prevalence of antibodies, range of hosts and interaction with wildlife in peste des petits ruminants (PPR) disease globally.

PPR can cause up to 90% mortality in non-immune or susceptible herds and is a problem in more than 70 countries, with outbreaks of late in Bulgaria, central Asia, the Middle East and east Africa.

Eradication

The World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations want to eradicate the disease by 2030.

RVC researchers are teamed with a range of partners including The Pirbright Institute, the University of Glasgow and the Southern African Centre for Infectious Diseases, and discoveries so far include:

• Identifying hosts for the virus in African buffalo, antelope species and wild suids across east Africa, but where the populations are resilient and infection is subclinically contrasting with confirming PPR disease in black-tailed gazelle, Siberian ibex and saiga antelope in Mongolia.
• Determining estimated and true PPR virus antibody prevalence statistics for certain species in specific ecosystems.
• Establishing evidence for spillover of the virus from small domestic ruminants to wildlife and the habit characteristics that can cause it, as well as likely outcomes in free-ranging populations in Africa and some in Asia.
• Confirming the nature and patterns of disease in small livestock in east Africa, including clarifying differential diagnostics and showing endemicity across many parts of the region in both savannah and forested ecosystems.
• Providing important science for determining eradication policy and methods for surveillance and monitoring the disease, as well as improved diagnostic protocols.

Vital work

Richard Kock, chairman in wildlife health and emerging diseases at the RVC Pathobiology and Population Sciences Department, said: “I worked with colleagues and partners through the latter two decades of the 20th century to successfully eradicate rinderpest virus from the earth, with massive benefits to domestic livestock, poor people, and wildlife conservation in Africa and Asia.

“The PPR virus has now become the focus of the international community for the elimination of the second animal virus of economic and environmental significance by 2030, and our work has been fundamental in establishing the new global research network and strategy for this process.”