Similarity of European porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus strains to vaccine strain is not necessarily predictive of the degree of protective immunity conferred

The objective of this study was to determine the degree of protection conferred by a Lelystad-like modified live virus (MLV) vaccine against a heterologous wild-type porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) isolate of the same cluster. For this purpose, fourteen 3-week-old piglets were divided into three groups: Group A pigs were vaccinated with a modified live virus vaccine, Group B pigs were used as positive controls, and Group C pigs as negative controls. Twenty-eight days after the last dose of vaccine, all pigs in Groups A and B were inoculated with the Spanish PRRSV strain 5710. To evaluate efficacy, clinical signs were recorded and the presence of challenge virus was determined by virus isolation in blood samples and nasal swabs collected at various time points post-challenge (p.c.) and in tissue samples collected at necropsy 24 days p.c. challenge, moderate clinical signs were observed in pigs from Groups A and B. In addition, all vaccinated pigs were viremic at least once, although viremia tended to be more sporadic in this group than in Group B pigs. PRRSV was detected in at least one tissue sample from four out of five pigs from Group A and in all pigs from Group B. The results indicate that the protection conferred by the MLV vaccine used in this study against a closely related virulent strain was only partial. The findings suggest that the degree of genetic homology of ORF5 between MLV vaccine and challenge isolate is not a good predictor of vaccine efficacy.