African Swine Fever Virus Infection
A special issue of Pathogens (ISSN 2076-0817). This special issue belongs to the section "Viral Pathogens".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 102555
Special Issue Editor
Interests: veterinary medicine; veterinary pathology; pathogenesis and immunology of infectious diseases; African swine fever
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Without any doubt, African swine fever (ASF) constitutes the biggest global problem the swine industry has ever faced. Since ASF appeared in Georgia in 2007 as a result of the transcontinental spread of genotype II ASFV isolates originally from Southeast Africa, the disease has spread like wild fire, first crossing Europe from East to West, and then jumping to Asia and reaching in 2018 the world’s largest pig producer, China. The disease has continued its unstoppable march, affecting several countries in Southeast Asia, until reaching in September 2019 the very doors of the Australian continent. This catastrophic scenario has forced to kill million pigs and has created a pessimistic outlook about the future of more than 500 million pigs, generating uncertainty that will last for years affecting international trade and markets.
The key role played by wild boar population in the spread and maintenance of ASF has opened a new scenario in which, along with the protection of domestic pigs, the control of the disease by vaccination in wild boar has been pointed as critical for the future outcome of the epidemic. So far, it has been assumed that ASFV infection in wild boar has a similar course as in domestic pigs. However, there are important gaps of knowledge regarding the pathogenesis and immunological mechanisms of ASF specifically in wild boar, so that not only biological differences with domestic pigs require to be identified, but also additional differences between experimental and natural ASFV infection in wild boar should be assessed.
Although over the last years some breakthroughs have been achieved, so far any attempt to develop a commercial vaccine against ASFV has failed due to the complexity of the causative agent, the Africa swine fever virus (ASFV). The precise nature of the protective responses has not been determined and protective antigens have not yet been identified. In addition, mechanisms by which the virus modulates the host response to infection are poorly understood.
In this issue, we would like to focus on all aspects of ASF that provide an update of our current knowledge of the disease and may contribute to vaccine development. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) transmission pathways, host–virus interactions, mechanisms of infection and viral spread, cell-virus interactions, disease dynamics, clinical aspects, pathology and standardization of pathological evaluation protocols, disease pathogenesis, factors responsible for virus virulence, virus persistence, vaccines, immune responses correlated with protection and how these can be activated, development and improvement of diagnostic techniques, new ASFV isolates discovery, epidemiology and antiviral drugs.
Dr. Pedro J. Sánchez-Cordón
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- transmission pathways
- host–virus interactions
- mechanisms of infection and viral spread
- cell-virus interactions
- disease dynamics
- clinical courses
- pathology
- disease pathogenesis
- virus virulence
- virus persistence
- vaccines
- immune response
- diagnostic techniques
- epidemiology
- antiviral drugs
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