Foot-and-mouth Disease Programme

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a viral disease principally affecting cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, buffalo and deer. The virus responsible, FMD virus (FMDV) exists as 7 types which are clinically indistinguishable but immunity to one type does not protect against infection with another type. FMD has extreme communicability; it can spread rapidly through livestock populations and across continents. The disease has very serious consequences including adverse animal welfare effects due to the formation of acutely painful blisters on the mouth, feet and udder and fatal heart disease in immature livestock. Livestock with a high productivity, such as modern dairy cattle and pigs suffer particularly badly, whereas indigenous tropical breeds kept for subsistence are more mildly affected. As well as losses in meat and milk production, indirect losses, from restrictions on trade and the costs of control measures, are substantial and can be enormous. Most developed countries have found living with FMD intolerable and have eradicated the disease. In contrast, most developing countries have lacked the resources to do this. Our research programme, probably the biggest on FMD worldwide, is concerned with both improving disease preparedness in developed countries and working towards international FMD control, including eventual eradication from developing countries. Existing diagnostic tests mainly require samples to be tested at centralised laboratories and full characterisation of new isolates is time consuming, both of which slows down turnaround. Limitations to existing vaccines include poor thermal stability, the time taken for the acquisition of sufficient immunity to prevent transmission; the short duration of immunity; the need to vaccinate against multiple strains; the failure of vaccination to prevent animals becoming virus carriers of the virus; and the difficulty of clearly distinguishing vaccinated from infected animals.

Efforts to control FMD, in disease-free countries such as the UK, centre upon keeping the virus out and rapidly detecting and eliminating it if it should be introduced. Culling infected herds can be used to arrest virus spread, whilst emergency vaccination can protect surrounding herds. Our research priorities are focussed towards (i) better diagnostics to detect the disease in its earliest stages and differentiate it from other similar disease, and to recognise silent infection in vaccinated animals; (ii) more rapidly acting vaccines or antiviral drugs that prevent infection and persistence and are compatible with tests for the presence of infection; (iii) better methods of predicting threats, vaccine efficacy and the likely extent of spread and losses within an infected population subjected to different control strategies.

In countries with endemic or sporadic FMD, control depends mainly on vaccination. The priority of research is to better understand factors predisposing to continued virus circulation and evolution and the emergence of strains with altered virulence or pandemic potential. Secondly, there is a need to improve diagnostic capability and to develop vaccines able to confer longer lasting protection against a wider range of FMD strains. A better understanding of virus/host-cell interactions at the molecular level could identify other potential targets for therapeutic intervention, and for better control and diagnosis of FMD.

 

Programme Leader: Dr David Paton
Deputy Programme Leaders Dr Bryan Charleston, Dr Terry Jackson

The Programme consists of the following Workpackages and Principal Investigators:

WP1 Evolution, epidemiology, modelling - David Paton, Nick Knowles, Simon
Gubbins, Jef Hammond, Don King, Zhidong Zhang, Bryan Charleston, Paul Barnett, Mana Mahapatra
WP2 Host immunity, new vaccines Bryan Charleston, Satya Parida, Paul Barnett, Geraldine Taylor
WP3 Mechanisms of virus replication, pathogenesis, persistence and tropism - Terry Jackson, Zhidong Zhang pathogenesis, persistence and tropism
WP4 Reference Laboratory -David Paton, Jef Hammond, Nigel Ferris, Don King
WP5 New diagnostics - Don King, Nigel Ferris, David Paton, Satya Parida, Terry Jackson
WP6 Commercialisation -David Paton, Jef Hammond, Nigel Ferris