Biosecurity Measures Reducing Spp. and Hepatitis E Virus Prevalence in Pig Farms-a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Overview

Journal Front Vet Sci

Specialty Veterinary Medicine

Date 2025 Jan 7

PMID 39764372

Authors

Nikolaus Huber

Marina Meester

Elena L Sassu

Elisabeth S L Waller

Gergana Krumova-Valcheva

Giuseppe Aprea

Daniela DAngelantonio

Veit Zoche-Golob

Silvia Scattolini

Emily Marriott

Richard P Smith

Elke Burow

Guido Correia Carreira

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

spp. and hepatitis E virus (HEV) are significant foodborne zoonotic pathogens that impact the health of livestock, farmers, and the general public. This study aimed to identify biosecurity measures (BSMs) against these pathogens on swine farms in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Overall, 1,529 articles from three scientific databases were screened manually and with the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ASReview. We identified 54 BSMs from 32 articles, primarily focused on spp. control. Amongst the extracted BSMs, only five measures for spp. control, namely, 'acidification of feed', 'acidification of drinking water', 'rodent control', 'all-in and all-out production', and 'disinfection' had sufficient observations to conduct a meta-analysis. Of these five, acidification and rodent control were found to be protective measures, that is, their summary odds ratios in the corresponding meta-analyses were lower than 1, indicating lower odds of spp. presence on farms which implemented these BSM compared to farms which did not implement them (odds ratio [OR] around 0.25). All-in and all-out production showed a non-significant protective effect (OR = 0.71), while disinfection showed a statistically non-significant lack of association between disinfection and the presence of spp. on the farm (OR = 1.03). For HEV, no meta-analysis could be performed. According to multiple articles, two BSMs were significantly associated with a lower risk of HEV presence, namely, disinfecting vehicles (OR = 0.30) and quarantining pigs before introducing them on the farm (OR = 0.48). A risk of bias assessment for each included article revealed a high risk in the majority of the articles, mainly due to selection and performance bias. This emphasises the lack of standardised, high-quality study designs and robust empirical evidence linking BSM implementation to pathogen reduction. The limited data available for meta-analysis, coupled with the high risk of bias (RoB) in the literature, highlights the urgent need for more substantial evidence on the effectiveness of BSMs in mitigating the transmission and spread of zoonotic pathogens, such as spp. and HEV on pig farms.

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