Genomic investigation of porcine periweaning failure to thrive syndrome (PFTS)

Porcine periweaning failure to thrive syndrome (PFTS) can be defined by anorexia, lethargy, progressive debilitation and compulsive behaviours that occur in seemingly healthy pigs within two to threeweeks of weaning in the absence of any known infectious, nutritional, management or environmental factors. A genetic component has been hypothesised for this syndrome. In the present study, 119 commercial pigs (80 cases and 39 controls) were genotyped with the porcine 80K single nucleotide polymorphism-chip and were analysed with logistic regression and two Fixation Index-based approaches. The analyses revealed several regions on chromosomes 1, 3, 6 and 11 with moderate divergence between cases and controls, particularly three haplotypes on SSC3 and 11. The gene-based analyses of the candidate regions revealed the presence of genes that have been reported to be associated with phenotypes like PFST including depression (PDE10A) and intestinal villous atrophy (CUL4A). It is important to increase the effort of collecting more samples to improve the power of these analyses.