Viral Disease and Epidemiology Research Division, National Institute of Animal Health, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 22;15(10):e0241177. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241177. eCollection 2020.
Emergency surveillance following an outbreak of transboundary animal diseases such as classical swine fever (CSF), is conducted to find another new infection as early as possible. Although larger sample sizes can help achieve higher disease surveillance sensitivity, the sample size is limited by the availability of resources in an emergency situation. Moreover, the recent CSF outbreak reported in Japan was associated with fewer clinical signs; this emphasizes the importance of detecting infected farms by surveillance. In this study, we aimed to identify effective and labor-efficient sampling methods showing high probabilities of detecting infection, by simulating infection and sampling in pigsties. We found that impartial sampling, which involves selection of pigs to be sampled from the four corners and the center of the pigsty, and random sampling showed comparable probabilities of detection. Impartial sampling involves sample collection without pig identification and random selection. Owing to its simplicity, impartial sampling is labor-efficient and thus a possible substitute for random sampling. In a group-housing pigsty, testing five pigs from five pens showed a higher detection probability than testing five pigs from one pen. These results suggest preferable surveillance methods for conducting emergency surveillance of infectious diseases.
对诸如经典猪瘟（CSF）等跨境动物疾病爆发进行紧急监测，是为了尽早发现另一种新的感染。尽管更大的样本量有助于提高疾病监测的敏感性，但在紧急情况下，样本量受到资源可用性的限制。此外，日本最近报告的 CSF 疫情临床症状较少，这强调了通过监测来检测感染农场的重要性。在这项研究中，我们旨在通过模拟猪圈中的感染和采样，确定有效的、劳动效率高的采样方法，这些方法具有较高的感染检测概率。我们发现，公正采样（即从猪圈的四个角落和中心选择要采样的猪）和随机采样具有相当的检测概率。公正采样不涉及猪识别的样本采集和随机选择。由于其简单性，公正采样劳动效率高，因此可以作为随机采样的替代品。在群体饲养的猪圈中，从五个猪圈中测试五头猪比从一个猪圈中测试五头猪具有更高的检测概率。这些结果为传染病的紧急监测提供了更可取的监测方法。
