UTMB’s One Health Research Team to Study Livestock Farms for Emerging Coronaviruses

By: Nathaniel Giles, MPH

Explosive outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 among agricultural workers and sustained viral transmission in humans compromised national food security and U.S. livestock systems during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Though livestock have not been reported to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the potential for the virus to spill over to new domestic animal species remains a major threat. As of July 12, 2023, human-adapted SARS-CoV-2 has infected at least 34 different non-human animal species in 39 countries.¹ Spillover events have been reported in 45 U.S. states.² Developing tools and protocols for surveillance for novel and other circulating coronaviruses in U.S. agriculture can help detect viruses that can potentially cause animal or human disease.

Professor Greg Gray (UTMB) and a team of researchers from multiple other institutions have received a U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant to study coronaviruses at the human-animal-environment health interface on Texas livestock farms. Their five-year, One Health-oriented, prospective research will conduct active surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses on sixteen livestock (cattle, pigs, or poultry) farms in Texas and Mexico.

Farms will be enrolled and followed for twelve months beginning in the fall of 2023. Upon enrollment and every four months, nasal/oral swab specimens from livestock, nasopharyngeal swabs and sera specimens from farm employees, and bioaerosol samples will be collected on farms. Occupational risk factors will then be assessed for coronavirus nasal carriage.

To detect novel viruses, samples will be studied with a pan-species coronavirus molecular assay and Sanger sequencing. Should a potentially novel coronavirus be identified, additional molecular testing, culture, and sequencing will be conducted to characterize the virus further.

In collaboration with GeneCapture, Inc., the researchers plan to field test a novel portable pan-coronavirus diagnostic assay using Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification on farms. Altogether, such surveillance may serve as a model for pre-pandemic pathogen detection and early mitigation.

Throughout the study, the UTMB One Health team will also work with Galveston College in Galveston, TX, to train up to forty undergraduate students in introductory virology laboratory skills over five years.

This research is critical to gaining new epidemiological knowledge regarding coronavirus transmission on livestock farms. It seeks to protect the health of livestock and animal workers since emerging viruses may cause outbreaks in livestock or farm workers.³

The American Rescue Plan Act provided funding for this project through USDA APHIS. The findings and conclusions in this [publication/presentation/blog/report] are those of the author(s) and do not represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.

References:

1. World Animal Health Information System, early warning system for the immediate management of alert notices: https://wahis.woah.org/#/home
2. US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Confirmed Cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Animals in the United States. 2023: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/onehealth/one-health-sarscov2-in-animals
3. Guo Y, Wentworth DE, Stucker KM, et al. Amino Acid Substitutions in Positions 385 and 393 of the Hydrophobic Region of VP4 May Be Associated with Rotavirus Attenuation and Cell Culture Adaptation. Viruses 2020;12(4). DOI: 10.3390/v12040408.