Effect of giving enrofloxacin in the diet to pigs experimentally infected with Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae

Three groups of 16 pigs were exposed individually when four weeks old to intranasal infection with 10(8.9) viable Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (serovar 3, strain 2/(10P2); a fourth group was kept in isolation from the others as uninfected controls. Seven days later the 62 surviving animals were killed and necropsied. The organism had caused typical, mainly subacute disease in 12 of the 16 unmedicated animals but in only two of the 16 which had had continuous access to a diet containing 150ppm of enrofloxacin from four hours before exposure to infection, and in six of the 16 given 32 ppm enrofloxacin. However, only 150 ppm enrofloxacin produced marked control of the infection in terms of reduced average severity of thoracic lesions and much reduced prevalence of the organism in the lung at necropsy, and the mean weight gain (1.55 kg) and feed conversion efficiency (2.08) of this infected group over seven days were similar to those of the unmedicated, uninfected controls (1.67 kg and 2.25). The infected but untreated group on average produced detectable antibody seven days after infection whereas in the infected and medicated groups a specific response against serovar 3 was absent.