Diagnosis of acute diarrhea in pigs and piglets in Meghalaya, India

This paper reports the diagnosis of acute diarrhoea in three male pigs and two female piglets died in an organized pig farm in Meghalaya, India. Intestinal contents and liver samples from dead pigs and piglets were investigated for isolation and identification of bacteria. Bacterial isolation confirmed the causative agent as Clostrodium perfringens. A total of eight C. perfringens were isolated out of 10 clinical samples. Isolates harbored identical double plasmid DNA of molecular weights 42.8 kb and 51.9 kb common to all. In polymerase chain reaction (PCR), all the eight (100%) clinical isolates harboured alpha toxin gene (cpa) and beta2 toxin gene (cpb2). None of the isolates were positive for beta, epsilon, iota and enterotoxin genes. The PCR analysis revealed that all isolates derived from acute diarrhoea belonged to C. perfringens type A. The partial cpa gene sequences from two Indian field isolates in BLAST showed similarity values greater than 99% to the published database sequences of C. perfringens. The phylogenetic analysis also revealed 98.6 to 100% sequence homology among the isolates studied. The findings suggested that C. perfringens type A having additional cpb2 gene might play a significant role in occurrence of acute diarrhoea in pigs and piglets in Meghalaya, India.