PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Infectious Diseases
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches in Veterinary Pathology: Diagnostics, Therapeutics, and Zoonotic Threats - volume IIView all 4 articles
Cardiac Puncture Blood Collection as a Practical and Biosecure Method for Postmortem Pathogen Detection in Pigs
Provisionally accepted
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities, St. Paul, United States
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Live pig specimen collection can be time-consuming as it may require physical restraining. Non-invasive methods for live animals that don't involve blood spillage are available but some may present limitations of application or pathogen detection. Alternative methods focused on the mortality are also available but may derive in blood spillage. As biocontainment and bioexclusion are of concern, especially for pathogens such as the ones that cause classical swine fever and African swine fever, alternative methods can be applied. This article presents the results and opinions of the use cardiac puncture as an alternative of specimen collection from dead pigs. This method was used in two separate studies involving porcine reproductive and respiratory virus detection from blood of dead pigs of different ages. Blood was successfully obtained from 286 suckling and growing pigs, that were euthanized or died during outbreaks of the tested virus. While only 273 samples could be tested due to the other 13 not yielding enough sera of having inhibitors, of those 95% had positive detections for the virus. This method was not only feasible for obtaining blood and test the sera, but also avoided environmental contamination with blood, offering an alternative tool for collection during outbreak investigations.
Keywords: Alternative specimen, intracardiac blood, Pathogen Detection, Post mortem, PRRS (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus)
Received: 07 Nov 2025; Accepted: 16 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Melini, Kikuti, Yue and Corzo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cesar A Corzo
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