African swine fever virus (ASFV) entered the northeastern (NE) part of India early in 2020, causing huge economic loss to the piggery sector. Here, we are presenting a brief report on the draft genome sequence of an ASFV strain ABTCVSCK_ASF007 from Assam state of NE India belonging to genotype II.

Background/Objectives: Porcine Circovirus 2 (PCV2) infection poses significant health and economic challenges to the global swine industry. The disease in pigs leads to lymphoid depletion, resulting in immunosuppression and increased susceptibility to co-infections with other bacterial and viral pathogens. This study evaluated the efficacy of two novel recombinant Newcastle disease virus (NDV) strain R2B vectored vaccines that express the cap gene of PCV2 alone and along with the transmembrane and cytoplasmic tail (TMCT) domains of the NDV F gene. The efficacy of the vaccine candidates was studied in mouse and pig models. Methods: Six-week-old BALB/c mice were divided into five groups and immunized intramuscularly three times at 14-day intervals with various vaccine candidates, namely rNDV-R2B-PCVcap-TMCT, rNDV-R2B-PCVcap, and CircoFLEX commercial vaccine, along with controls. Following immunization and PCV2d virus challenge, multiple assays assessed the immune responses in animal trials. In the pig animal trial, pigs were divided into four groups: a control group (PBS), NDV-vectored PCVcap-TMCT group, NDV-vectored-PCVcap group, and CircoFLEX vaccine group. Pigs were immunized intramuscularly twice at 28-day intervals. Blood samples were collected at regular intervals over 70 days to evaluate the humoral and cell-mediated immune responses. Results: Both mice and pigs’ trials indicated that the NDV-vectored PCV2 cap-TMCT vaccine candidate elicited superior immune responses. In mice, the rNDV-R2B-PCVcap-TMCT group showed enhanced humoral and cellular immunity, increased PCV2-specific antibody levels, higher CD4+/CD8+ ratio, elevated IFN-γ and TNF-α levels, decreased IL-10 levels, reduced viral loads, and minimal histopathological changes. In pigs, the NDV-vectored PCVcap-TMCT group demonstrated better antibody responses, cytokine profiles (IFN-γ and IL-10), and higher levels of PCV2-specific neutralizing antibodies against the PCV2a, PCV2b and PCV2d genotypes when compared to other groups. Conclusions: These findings suggest NDV-vectored PCVcap-TMCT vaccine candidate, expressing the cap gene of PCV2 along with the TMCT domain, offers a promising alternative for protecting against PCV2 infection, potentially addressing the challenges posed by emerging PCV2 strains in the swine industry.

The present study aimed to investigate the episodes of per-acute mortality due to peste des petits ruminants (PPR) that resulted in the death of 30 animals of different species of cervids, namely, barking deer, four-horned antelope, hog deer, thamin, and mouse deer in the State Zoo of Assam, a northeastern state of India. The affected animals showed no to limited clinical signs. However, the necropsy and histopathological findings were highly suggestive of PPR virus (PPRV) infection observed in domestic small ruminants. Representative tissue samples were screened for the presence of PPRV along with blue tongue virus (BTV) and epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus (EHDV) using RT-PCR or RT-qPCR and were found to be positive for PPRV. Considering the sudden outbreak of PPR in captive cervids, we sought to determine the role of domestic goats as the potential spillover host. To verify that, archived tissue samples of domestic goats collected during PPRV outbreaks in nearby localities and slaughtered goats used as meat for Carnivorous animals in the State Zoo were also screened and found to be positive for PPRV in RT-PCR. Phylogenetic analysis based on the Nucleocapsid (N) protein gene of PPRV from infected cervids, domestic goats, and goat meat revealed the virus to be of Lineage IV origin. Our findings provide evidence of probable spillover of PPRV from domestic goats to captive endangered cervids and circulation of Lineage IV PPRV strains among the small-ruminant population of this region.

This research introduces a novel method that integrates both unsupervised and supervised learning, leveraging SimCLR (Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations) for self-supervised learning along with different pre-trained models to improve microscopic image classification of Babesia parasite in canines. We focused on three popular CNN architectures, namely ResNet, EfficientNet, and DenseNet, and evaluated the impact of SimCLR pre-training on their performance. A detailed comparison of the different variants of ResNet, EfficientNet, and Densenet in terms of classification accuracy and training efficiency is presented. Base models such as different variants of the ResNet, EfficientNet, and DenseNet models were utilized within the SimCLR framework. Firstly, the models were pre-trained on unlabeled images, followed by training classifiers on labeled datasets. This approach significantly improved the robustness and accuracy, demonstrating the potential benefits of combining contrastive learning with conventional supervised techniques. The highest accuracy of 97.07% was achieved by Efficientnet_b2. Thus, detection of Babesia or other hemoparasites in microscopic blood smear images could be automated with high accuracy without using a labelled dataset.

Porcine circovirus-associated disease caused by porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is a vital threat to the global pig industry. In this study, we have characterized the complete genome sequence of a PCV2 isolate, namely, Assam-01, belonging to the genotype PCV2d.

Background: Classical swine fever, a highly endemic pig disease in India, particularly in the NER, spots Assam with the highest outbreaks. Despite available CSF vaccines, concern prevails over protective immune response of C-strain vaccine, as emerging genotype 2 replaces genotype 1 globally, causing outbreak in immunized herds. Methods: The study assessed the cross-protective and cross-neutralization potency of existing vaccines against additional prevalent genotypes. Archived CSFV samples were reconfirmed by S-ELISA and nRT-PCR. Following E2 full-length genome sequencing and phylogeny (MEGA-X), representative CSFV samples from NER were isolated in PK-15 cell line. Hyper-immune serum was raised to test neutralization and cross–neutralization efficacy. Result: Of 77 archived samples, 43 were S-ELISA positive and 47 nRT-PCR. Phylogenetic analysis revealed either 1.1 or 2.2 sub-genotypes. Virus titre was 4.49-5.16 log TCID50 per ml in four samples representing two sub-genotypes (1.1 and 2.2) after 5 passages in PK-15 cells. Neutralization assay showed complete neutralization for sub-genotype 1.1, sub-genotype 2.2 showed 84% with C-strain specific antibody. The study revealed prevalence of both sub-genotypes 1.1 and 2.2 in NER with lower neutralization efficacy of vaccine strain antibodies to heterologous genotypes with conserved immunogenic epitope.