A serological survey of salmon pancreas disease virus (SPDV) antibodies in farmed Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L.

Pancreas disease (PD) of farmed Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., was first recognized in Scotland in 1976 (Munro, Ellis, McVicar & McLay 1984).It was subsequently described in Norway (Poppe, Rimstad & Hyllseth 1989), Ireland (Murphy, Rodger, Drinan, Gannon, Kruse & Korting 1992), the west coast of the USA (Kent & Elston 1987) and was also reported in France and Spain (Raynard, Houghton & Munro 1992).PD usually affects farmed reared Atlantic salmon during their first year at sea.Clinically affected fish become anorexic and exhibit sluggish swimming activity.Mortality rates of 10-50% of the yearly smolt input have been reported on Irish salmon farms (Wheatley 1994;Menzies, Wheatley, McLoughlin & Goodall 1996).Growth is significantly reduced during the acute and recovery phases of PD, with 10-15% of survivors failing to grow and many dying several months after the acute phase of the disease.A toga-like virus known as salmon pancreas disease virus (SPDV) was recently isolated from PD-affected Atlantic salmon smolts (Nelson, McLoughlin, Rowley, Platten & McCormick 1995) and has been shown to reproduce PD experimentally (McLoughlin, Nelson, Rowley, Cox & Grant 1996).