Animal welfare

Swine inflammation and necrosis syndrome and its genetic association with repeated skin damage scores

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Abstract

Lesions and injuries to the extremities of pig body parts are commonly associated with biting. However, lesion signs identified at birth and in 3-day-old piglets suggest that injuries might also be caused by Swine Inflammation and Necrosis Syndrome (SINS), which can occur without any interaction with other pigs. This study investigated the genetic background of SINS across different body parts, its genetic correlation with Skin Damage (DMG), and the genomic regions associated with the syndrome. The study included approximately 7,000 females born between February 2022 and June 2023 across three farms in the Netherlands. At birth, SINS was scored on the ears, tail, and teats (0= no SINS; 1= affected by SINS). Tail docking occurred after phenotyping for SINS. The SINS total was defined as the number of affected body parts. During the rearing phase, the same animals were scored an average of three times for DMG on the ears, tail, and flank (1= no DMG, 2= slight, 3= severe, and 4= very severe), resulting in approximately 20,000 DMG records. DMG total was defined as the sum of scores in the three body parts. Single- and two-trait animal models were used to estimate heritabilities and genetic correlations, with a maternal effect included for SINS. Additionally, a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) was performed using a sliding-window approach (30 adjacent SNPs) to estimate the percentage of genetic variance explained by SNP windows. The ones explaining more than 1% of the genetic variance were selected for gene searching using the Sscrofa 11.1 genome assembly and Ensembl Release 113. Biological processes enrichment analysis was performed with ClueGO in Cytoscape, followed by a literature review. Direct heritabilities for SINS and DMG ranged from 0.03 to 0.09, whereas maternal heritabilities for SINS ranged from 0.01 to 0.05. Genetic correlations between SINS and DMG ranged from 0.20 to 0.78 across body parts, as shown in Table 1. For DMG in the ear and total, the genetic correlation with SINS total was high. As the animals had their tail docked, this impacted the prevalence of DMG in the tail, resulting in a low correlation with this part of the body. Our study indicates that DMG can be reduced indirectly by selecting against SINS at an earlier age. Although SINS is a polygenic trait, five target genes (DLL1, PHF10, WDR27, and THBS2) were identified on chromosome 1, all of which are involved in embryonic and tissue development. These genes may serve as targets for future studies to understand the biological mechanisms underlying SINS better and to support genomic selection strategies.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Garcia, A., Leite, N., Vogelzang, R., Rocha, R., Neerhof, A., Knol, E., Guimarães, S. & Lourenco, D., (2026) “Swine inflammation and necrosis syndrome and its genetic association with repeated skin damage scores”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2284596. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23602

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