Introduction: Porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED) is a coronavirus enteric disease that affects pigs of all ages. The virus (PEDV) destroys mature enterocytes, causes villous atrophy, diarrhoea, malabsorption and high mortality in piglets. The aim of this study was to collect information about the epidemiological situation in the country, to present some characteristics of the detected PEDV strain and the observed pathology.
Materials and Methods: Dead pigs, faecal samples and sera from farms with unknown epidemiological situation, farms with known PEDV-positive serology and the farm with a confirmed PED outbreak were collected and pathological lesions compared with laboratory results.
Results: PEDV was detected for the first time in Slovenia in January 2015 in faecal samples from two farms with diarrhoea in fattening pigs using commercial real-time PCR and was confirmed again at necropsy examination in March. The detected PEDV strain caused characteristic pathological lesions of the intestinal mucosa. Direct sequencing of partial RNA polymerase gene (390 nucleotides) confirmed that the virus was an alpha coronavirus with 99.7% nucleotide identity to the strain reported in Germany in 2014. In addition, serology results from 184 tested archive serum samples from 88 farms confirmed that PEDV was present in Slovenia in September 2014 in 18.9% of tested farms, while in February 2015, PED antibody-positive pigs were identified in 11 out of 14 (78.6%) tested farms.
Conclusions: PED is an emerging disease and the results obtained in this study are important for the evaluation of the risks associated with the spread of PEDV.