Efficacy evaluation of two commercial modified-live virus vaccines against a novel recombinant type 2 porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus

NADC30-like porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) causing clinical disease outbreaks has been recently reported in China. The recombination occurring among PRRSV strains could lead to the emergence of novel and more virulent viruses. In our previous study, a novel recombinant type 2 PRRSV (TJnh1501) between NADC30-like and modified-live virus (MLV)-like derived from the Chinese highly pathogenic PRRSV was shown to have higher pathogenicity than NADC30-like PRRSV. It remains unknown whether the emergence of the novel recombinant PRRSV strain can lead to variable protection efficacy of the MLV vaccines. In this paper, two typical commercial MLV vaccines were used to evaluate their efficacy to block TJnh1501 infection and onset of clinical symptoms. Our results showed that both MLV vaccines could shorten the period of fever and reduce viral loads in sera, but were not able to reduce the clinical signs and lung lesions indicating that the two commercial MLV vaccines provide limited cross-protection efficacy against the novel recombinant type 2 PRRSV infection. This study gives valuable suggestions for the use of MLV vaccines to control PRRSV infection in the field.