Porcine intestinal spirochaetosis

Clinical signs are most commonly seen in young pigs aged eight to 14 weeks. Normally, a greyish diarrhoea is seen in individual piglets, and poor growth rates and feed conversion ratios are observed on a herd level.

Stress, caused by moving and mixing groups of piglets, can increase incidence.

A definitive diagnosis can be made by culturing the bacterium on a specific blood agar medium, followed by PCR. Alternatively, necropsy and histological examination of the large intestine can confirm the diagnosis.

Antibiotics are the treatment of choice. They should be administered by injection or in drinking water. Pig husbandry measures should be employed to ensure that stressors such as the mixing and moving of pigs are kept to a minimum to reduce disease incidence.

• Porcine Intestinal Spirochaetosis, reviewed and published by WikiVet at http://en.wikivet.net/Porcine_Intestinal_Spirochaetosis, accessed 19/09/2011.

This veterinary medicine–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e