Ohio’s Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (ADDL) will now be contributing data to the Swine Disease Reporting System (SDRS) to further enhance capabilities as a surveillance tool and for early detection of pathogens of economic consequence to US livestock production. ADDL provides regulatory testing support for disease control programs and full diagnostic laboratory services for veterinarians, livestock producers and agribusinesses within and beyond Ohio. The SDRS provides data used for disease prevention and biosecurity, disease monitoring, disease management, and disease forecasting. The Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) conceptualized and funded systems for near real-time domestic and global swine disease monitoring to enable better, faster, and more effective response to endemic or foreign infectious diseases. As a result, SHIC helps the industry toward better swine health information to positively impact the long-term sustainability of pork production with the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report.
More than 420,000 tests are performed annually across nine lab sections of the ADDL: aquaculture, avian serology, bacteriology, histology, immunohistochemistry, molecular diagnostics, pathology, serology, and virology. Swine pathogen PCR testing made up approximately 67% of the ADDL molecular diagnostics workload in 2020. Same-day test results are provided by ADDL to clients for PRRS, swine influenza, swine enteric coronaviruses, and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae. Sequencing is also performed for PRRS and swine influenza to monitor for emerging viruses and epidemiology studies. Ranked 8th nationally in hog and pig inventory, Ohio’s swine industry depends on high quality, fast turnaround testing provided by the ADDL.
The Ohio ADDL is accredited by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD), a designation it has maintained since 1999. The lab is also accredited in accordance with ISO/IEC 17025:2017 to perform the following tests: Salmonella enteritidis culture from environmental samples, Salmonella enteritidis testing for eggs, MALDI-TOF for bacterial identification, Pseudorabies gB and gI ELISAs, and whole genome sequencing of bacteria isolates.
At the national level, the ADDL is a Level 1 lab in the USDA National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN), providing capacity and capabilities for diagnostic testing to respond to emerging and emergency animal disease situations at the state, regional and national level. The laboratory also is one of the FDA Vet-LIRN regional whole genome sequencing centers and is a member of the FDA Global GenomeTrakr network, providing sequencing services for local, national, and international case investigations and surveillance studies.
Key ADDL staff members include Dennis Summers, DVM, DACVPM, Interim State Veterinarian for the state of Ohio, Richard French, MS, DVM, PhD, Laboratory Director, Yan Zhang, MS DVM, PhD, virology section head, and Melanie Prarat, MS. Dr. Summers participated in the inaugural US SHIP House of Delegates meeting earlier this year. Dr. French spent the previous six years building laboratory infrastructure in China and was working in China during the first several years of the ASFV outbreaks. Dr. Zhang identified porcine deltacoronavirus in the US in 2014 and produced the first report linking the virus to a disease outbreak. Prarat previously worked at Plum Island Animal Disease Center studying pathogenesis and vaccine development for classical swine fever virus and coordinates molecular assay development and swine disease epidemiology studies at the ADDL.
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