Analysis reveals severe mutations in ORF5 of PRRSV2 in pigs, indicating potential vaccine inadequacy.
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV)2 is a highly contagious Ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus of the Arteriviridae family that causes reproductive and respiratory disorders in pigs, posing a major economic threat to the swine industry in Republic of Korea and worldwide. Recently, a PRRSV2-related virus was isolated from a pig farm in Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea, and its open reading frame 5 (ORF5, also known as GP5; glycoprotein 5) was sequenced to characterize the strain. Sequence alignment showed only 57.7% identity to PRRSV1 references, consistent with PRRSV2 rather than PRRSV1; however, surprisingly, due to the severe mutation in ORF5, this sequence does not belong to any known PRRSV2 strain with an average identity of 87.4%. These findings raise concerns about the effectiveness of currently available PRRSV2 vaccines in Republic of Korea and suggest that vaccines derived from newly isolated strains may be required for more effective protection.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Kim et al. (2025) studied this question.