Porcine Proliferative Enteropathy (PPE, ileitis) is a common entenc disease of grow-finish swine which may result in poor growth rale, diarrhoea, and stunting or may be manifested as sudden death or bloody diarrhoea in late finishing pigs and replacement gilts. The recently identified causative organism, Lawsonia intracellularis (LI) is a fastidious and obligately intracellular bacterium of the Desulfovirionaceae family. Recently, the inoculation of pip with pure cultures of LI has allowed successful reproduction of disease without the confounding effect of other potentially pathogenic microflora and variability of infective dose inherent in crude inoculum preparations. Tiamulin (Denagard~(R)) is a member of the diterpene class of antibiotics, which are selectively reserved for use in food producing animals and are not used in human medicine. Tiamulin achieves high tissue levels in both the enteric and respiratory tracts. Tiamulin has good in vitro activity against gram positive bacteria, mycoplasmas, anaerobes, spirochaetes (e.g. Serpulina spp.), and selective gram negative activity including Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, Haemophilus parasuis, Pasteurella mullocida and Lawsonia intracellularis. The purpose of this study was to characterise LI infection using both ante-mortem and post-mortem diagnostic techniques and to evaluate the impact of dietary tiamulin on development of clinical signs and lesions of PPE, as well as monitor faecal shedding and serological response.
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