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Fever, diarrhea, sore eyes or discolored blue skin, and death after one week – An African swine fever infection is usually rapid and severe. Some virus strains kill 100 percent of infected animals. In addition, there are special properties that make the assassin a feared enemy, especially for animal husbandry.
A body was found in Brandenburg on Wednesday, which was classified as an official suspected case of African swine fever. On Thursday, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the first case of African swine fever in Germany. Experts from the Friedrich Loeffler Institute had previously examined the animal (the most important answers to the current case can be read here).
The ASF pathogen is a DNA virus, such as herpes, papilloma, and smallpox viruses. Unlike these relatives, it is not dangerous to humans: African swine fever is not a zoonosis. Even those who eat meat from infected animals cannot get sick.
The pathogen survives in frozen meat for more than two years.
However, viruses are extremely resistant, can survive for years and remain contagious, in frozen meat even for up to 1000 days.
Once the virus has attacked the host, it multiplies mainly in certain cells of the immune system, the so-called monocytes and macrophages. The destruction of these cells triggers a cascade of reactions: messenger substances flood the bloodstream and fuel inflammatory reactions, and the vessel walls become more permeable, leading to bleeding. ASP causes hemorrhagic fever, comparable to Ebola in humans. It is not yet known which docking sites viruses use to target the cell. This knowledge could be the prerequisite for targeted therapies.
Stability and easy transfer through food, blood in small amounts, or animal carcasses make containment so difficult – every sausage sandwich that travelers throw into a rest area at the edge of the forest can infect To a wild boar, every tire track on a truck can spread the disease: the virus can spread Vehicles, clothing or shoes stick, even hunting trophies in affected areas.
Humans accelerate the spread of disease
So it is mainly people who are accelerating the progression of the disease. It has been shown that in the past the disease was introduced from Ukraine to the Baltic States through raw sausages contaminated with viruses. On the other hand, predators like wolves are not suspected of spreading the disease, even if they drag infected carcasses. Scavengers could even be useful in containment, cleaning contaminated meat.
In wild boars, the disease is similar to that of domestic pigs: the animals are feverish and weak, have diarrhea and shortness of breath, and hunters find that they cannot escape; “staying in the wallow” is what the hunter calls apparent fearlessness. As there are more and more wild boars in Germany and other European countries, some experts have been calling for years to reduce the density of wild boars through hunting.
In Africa, the virus is found in wild boars and is transmitted to domestic pigs through leather ticks. Ticks suck the blood of their hosts and, in turn, become a breeding ground for viruses. Wild boars do not get sick from swine fever, but they can carry the pathogen for years and thus repeatedly carry the deadly burden on ticks.
No vaccine in sight
In Europe, the disease first appeared in Sardinia in 1978, but it was found there despite repeated outbreaks. Introduced into Georgia through contaminated food, the ASF virus began to spread in Europe in 2007. From Poland it has now reached Brandenburg.
In this country, blood or tissue samples from suspected ASF cases are sent to the Friedrich Loeffler Institute on Riems Island. Only there, at the National Reference Laboratory for the disease, can infection be detected by PCR or antigen tests, as has now happened for the first time.
There is no vaccine against the ASF virus, but there are now possible candidates. Only at the beginning of this week, Spanish scientists reported in the magazine “Porcine Health Management” on the ongoing projects, which include weakened live virus vaccines, as well as active substances based on certain virus components. So far, none of the candidates have been tested in studies.
