Farmscape for May 3, 2018

Scientists with the University of Saskatchewan, working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc, have developed a new susceptibility test method to identify the most effective antimicrobials for treating specific strains of Brachyspira.
The effort was prompted by the emergence of a novel species of Brachyspira in the late 2000s that resisted conventional treatment.
Dr. Joe Rubin, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, says improved diagnostics will help practitioners select the most appropriate antimicrobials for treating affected herds.

Clip-Dr. Joe Rubin-University of Saskatchewan:
Having diagnostics and having some laboratory evidence to guide the selection of an antibiotic allows a practitioner to select the appropriate and most efficacious drug as soon as possible.
There's economic advantages in terms of decreasing the amount of time until the most appropriate therapy is applied so hopefully there's a lower burden of disease.
There's also the issue of reducing the selection pressure for antimicrobial resistance.
If we use the most appropriate drug first and avoid using potentially multiple courses of less efficacious drugs, we have less selection pressure for resistance, which is something the public is becoming more and more aware of and something we want to avoid as good stewards of antimicrobials.
Anecdotally there's evidence of increasing resistance in Europe as well as in the United States among Brachyspira and the implication of that is that it means there's fewer treatment options available for Brachyspira Associated Disease.

Dr. Rubin says the new susceptibility test method has worked well in the lab and is now being piloted by a small number of practitioners in western Canada.
He hopes the test method can be made more widely available by early 2019.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork