구제역의 최근 세계적 발생 특성과 분자역학적 고찰

Molecular epidemiological analysis and recent distribution of foot-and-mouth disease in the world

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus exists in seven serotypes and it is known as a malignant contagious disease that is hard to eradicate in the world. Since the FMD outbreaks which had occurred in Korea in 2000 and 2002 twice are considered to be introduced from neighboring countries, it is very important to get the FMD situations and information of other countries around Korea. The phylogenetic analysis with VP1 gene of the strains of serotype Asia 1 reported from China since 2005 shows that those strains are very close to each other and clustered together with the isolates from Mongolia and Russia in 2005. The homologous type has spread even to North Korea in early 2007 through imported cattle. Therefore, it has been becoming really big threat to Korea. Interestingly, this type Asia1 strain appears to have tendency to infect cattle better than other species from the analysis of the reported cases. In experimental studies, however, it was reported that this Chinese strain is not host restricted, but not all pigs produce typical clinical symptom. In this paper, the current situation in Korea and the neighboring countries through recent topographical and molecular epidemiological analysis of FMD in the world is discussed.