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Contributed Talk

Session: : Disease And Epidemiology 5

COS 259-1 - Mechanisms of persistence of highly transmissible foot-and-mouth viruses in their maintenance host, African buffalo (Syncerus caffer).

Thursday, August 10, 2023
10:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT
Location: D138
Abstract: Extremely contagious pathogens are a global biosecurity threat because of their high burden of

morbidity and mortality, as well as their capacity for fast-moving epidemics that are difficult to quell.

Understanding the mechanisms enabling persistence of highly transmissible pathogens in host

populations is thus a central problem in disease ecology. Through a combination of experimental and

theoretical approaches, we investigated how highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease viruses persist in

the African buffalo, which serves as their wildlife reservoir. We found that viral persistence through

transmission among acutely infected hosts alone is unlikely. Working with three viral strains (SAT1,2,3), we found that different strains appear to utilize distinct mechanisms to ensure their long-term persistence in their maintenance host: The inclusion of occasional transmission from persistently infected carriers reliably rescues the most infectious viral strain (SAT1) from fade-out. We observed that antibody titers against FMD viruses are surprisingly dynamic in buffalo; and show that frequent drops in antibody protection can allow persistence of the least transmissible strain we studied (SAT3). The persistence of SAT2 remains somewhat enigmatic - additional mechanisms such as antigenic shift, or spillover among host populations may be required for its persistence.