| dc.description.abstract | SUMMARY
The first African swine fever (ASF) cases outside Africa were diagnosed in Portugal in 1957. Since 2017 the African swine fever virus (ASFV) has been continuously spreading in Eastern Europe, then it arrived to Asia, and by now it became the biggest economic and animal health threat to the swine industry of the world. In Europe both the wild boar and domestic pig populations are affected by the disease. ASFV is very resistant against environmental and physical effects and it may remain infectious in carcasses for months. This resistance largely con-tributes to the fact that ASFV infection can be sustained for a prolonged time even in low density wild boar populations. Depending on the infectious route, the virulence of the strain and the quantity of the acting virus, the course and symptoms of the disease can vary significantly. Peracute, acute, subacute and chronic forms of the disease can be distinguished. So far a few genes were shown to have an impact on the virulence of the virus, including the members of two multigene families (MGF 360 and MGF 505), and the genes DP71L, DP96R and DB69R (UK). Vaccine developments based on classical attenuation and virus inactivation methods failed to produce safe and effective vaccines against ASFV. Based on the available data, it seems that the development of live attenuated vaccines by targeted mutagenesis can bring a breakthrough in vaccine develop-ment, however, there are still a lot of problems to be solved. Vaccine research is hampered by the lack of established continuous cell lines in which ASFV can be propagated in high titer without genetic changes. A great variety of immuno-logical and DNA based tests can be applied to diagnose ASFV, however, the use of PCR and immunoperoxidase staining are the most reliable methods used in practice. Since currently there is no available vaccine, the most effective defen-sive measures against the virus are the implementation of rigorous biosafety and biosecurity standards on the pig farms to prevent viral infection of the livestock. | en_US |
