Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease during 2010–2011 Epidemic, South Korea

Jong-Hyeon Park

, Kwang-Nyeong Lee, Young-Joon Ko, Su-Mi Kim, Hyang-Sim Lee, Yeun-Kyung Shin, Hyun-Joo Sohn, Jee-Yong Park, Jung-Yong Yeh, Yoon-Hee Lee, Min-Jeong Kim, Yi-Seok Joo, Hachung Yoon, Soon-Seek Yoon, In-Soo Cho, and Byounghan Kim

Author affiliations: Animal, Plant and Fisheries Quarantine and Inspection Agency, Anyang, South Korea (J.-H. Park, K.-N. Lee, Y.-J. Ko, S.-M. Kim, H.-S. Lee, Y.-K. Shin, H.-J. Sohn, J.-Y. Park, J.-Y. Yeh, Y.-H. Lee, M.-J. Kim, Y.-S. Joo, H. Yoon, S.-S. Yoon, I.-S. Cho, B. Kim); Univeristy of Incheon, Incheon, South Korea (J.-Y. Yeh)

Abstract

An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease caused by serotype O virus occurred in cattle and pigs in South Korea during November 2010–April 2011. The highest rates of case and virus detection were observed 44 days after the first case was detected. Detection rates declined rapidly after culling and completion of a national vaccination program.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious disease caused by foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV; family Picornaviridae, genus Aphthovirus). FMDV serotypes O, A, and Asia1 are widespread in Southeast Asia (1). In South Korea, small-scale outbreaks of FMDV infection caused by serotype O occurred in March 2000, May 2002, and April 2010 (2–5), and an outbreak caused by serotype A occurred in January 2010 (6). In contrast, an outbreak during November 2010–April 2011 was much more widespread (7). We reviewed the progression of this outbreak and methods used to control it, including culling and vaccination of pigs and cattle.

The Study

Clinical signs of FMD in animals appeared on November 23, 2010, in a pig-farming complex in Gyeongbuk Province. Reporting to the central government was delayed for ≈1 week because of misdiagnosis caused by false-negative results from a pen-side antibody kit. FMD-positive test results were confirmed on November 28–29 (Table 1) in samples from saliva, vesicles, and detached hooves from pigs with signs typical of FMDV infection (i.e., salivation, vesiculation, and ulceration) (7). Samples from pigs with clinical signs of infection tested positive by antibody-detection assay using solid-phase competition ELISA (PrioCHECK; Prionics, Schlieren, Switzerland) for the O serotype, excluding liquid-phase blocking ELISA; however, antibody tests using nonstructural protein ELISA (VDPro; Jeno Biotech Inc., Chuncheon, South Korea) showed negative results (Table 1).