Gene-edited animals remained healthy when exposed to highly contagious deadly disease
Pigs that are resistant to a deadly viral disease have been created by scientists at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute.
The gene-edited animals remained healthy when exposed to classical swine fever (CSF), a highly contagious and often fatal disease. The virus was eradicated in the UK in 1966, but there have been several outbreaks since and it continues to pose a major threat to pig farming worldwide.
“Classical swine fever is a devastating disease for livestock and farmers as we saw with the outbreak in the UK, 25 years ago,” said Helen Crooke, mammalian virology deputy leader at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), where the pig trial was performed. “Hopefully this breakthrough can help bolster the resilience of the livestock sector to the disease.”
Classical swine fever, also known as hog cholera or pig plague, causes fever, skin lesions, convulsions, diarrhoea – and often death within 15 days.
