6533b855fe1ef96bd12b1b21

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Genetic Variability and Antigenic Diversity of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus

subject

description

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is an acute systemic disease of cloven-hooved animals, including cattle, swine, sheep, and goats. Despite mortality rates being generally below 5%, FMD severely decreases livestock productivity and trade. It is considered the economically most important disease of farm animals. Near two thousand million doses of vaccine are used annually to try to control FMD, which, nevertheless, is enzootic in most South American and African countries, parts of Asia, the Middle East, and the south of Europe. The causative agent, foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), is an aphthovirus of the family Picornaviridae, a historically important virus as it was the first recognized viral agent (Loeffler and Frosch, 1898). In this chapter we review briefly the structure of FMDV and the organization and expression of its genome (Section II) and, in more detail, recent results on genetic variability (Section III) and antigenic diversity (Section V), reflected in several serotypes and subtypes of the virus. Such a diversity has implications for vaccine design and disease control, as discussed in Section V. Finally, we propose a model of evolution of FMDV and discuss its implications (Sections VI and VII).