Molecular serotyping of clinical strains of<i>Haemophilus (Glaesserella) parasuis</i>brings new insights regarding Glässer’s disease outbreaks in Brazil

Abstract

Glässer's disease (GD) is an important infectious disease of swine caused by <i>Haemophilus (Glaesserella) parasuis</i>. Vaccination with inactivated whole cell vaccines is the major approach for prevention of <i>H. parasuis</i> infection worldwide, but the immunity induced is predominantly against the specific polysaccharide capsule. As a consequence, the available vaccines may not induce adequate protection against the field strains, when the capsules present in the vaccine strains are different from those in strains isolated from the farms. Therefore, it is crucial to map <i>H. parasuis</i> serovars associated with regional outbreaks so that appropriate bacterin vaccines can be developed and distributed for prevention of infection. In this study, 459 <i>H. parasuis</i> field strains isolated from different Glässer's disease outbreaks that occurred in 10 different Brazilian States were analyzed for serotype using PCR-based approaches. Surprisingly, non-typeable (NT) strains were the second most prevalent group of field strains and along with serovars 4, 5 and 1 comprised more than 70% of the isolates. A PCR-based approach designed to amplify the entire polysaccharide capsule locus revealed 9 different band patterns in the NT strains, and 75% of the NT strains belonged to three clusters, suggesting that a number of new serovars are responsible for a substantial proportion of disease. These results indicate that commercially available vaccines in Brazil do not cover the most prevalent <i>H. parasuis</i> serovars associated with GD.