Designing disease control and/or eradication protocols depends mostly in how much we know about the pathogen we want to eliminate. Regarding Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, the causative agent of Enzootic Pneumonia, many questions remain unanswered. A central question is the duration in time that infected pigs can infect incoming naïve animals. This is critical when designing herd closure schemes for eradication. The results of this study described the longest period of persistence of the bacteria in adult animals, which was approximately 7 months after infection when the bacteria was still able to be transmitted to naïve animals. It was also shown that elimination of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae from the adult pigs occurred some time before 8 months after infection. The information from this study also showed that vaccination of naïve animals was not enough to protect them against infection, even in the chronic stages of the disease.
The knowledge gained from this experiment results crucial for the definition of strategies to contain or eliminate Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae in swine farms.