Effect of season, age and sex on E. coli adhesion patterns in Indigenous Ghurrah pigs - a comparative analysis of phenotypic classifications

ABSTRACT

Neonatal diarrhoea is among one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality in piglets of India. E. coli are the major pathogens contributing more than half of the incidence and about a quarter of mortality from diarrhoea worldwide. The present study was designed with the objective to explore the effect of sex, season and age on E. coli intestinal adhesion patterns in Indian Ghurrah pigs. In this investigation, 80 animals were screened for adhesion pattern of the porcine brush border epithelial cells with Indian isolate of diarrhoeagenic E. coli through in vitro microscopic adhesion assay and classification of animals for adhesion pattern was performed following six different criteria described by several group of researchers worldwide. About one-third of the samples under the present investigation had shown non-adhesive and weakly adhesive phenotype according to the different reported classification of adhesion patterns. This indicates the indigenous Ghurrah pigs are comparatively less susceptible to E. coli mediated diarrhoea. The Wald Chi-square analysis revealed that season had a significant effect (P ≤ 0.05) on adhesion patterns in all the classification of adhesion patterns. However, sex of the animal had a significant effect (P ≤ 0.05) on adhesive patterns only in one of the reported classification method. Winter season was found to have more weakly and non-adhesive patterns (lesser susceptible animals) rather than adhesive patterns (susceptible animals) as compared to the summer season. So, better managemental practices along with preventive measures should be followed in summer season to reduce thermal stress in the animals which may help in lowering the incidence of piglet diarrhoea. Non-significant effect of age also indicates presence of the specific bacterial adhesin receptors even in adult age.

KEYWORDS:

• Diarrhoea
• adhesion pattern
• ghurrah
• E coli
• pig

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.