Anthrax is a disease of concern in many mammals, including humans. Management primarily consists of prevention through vaccination and tracking clinical-level observations because environmental isolation is laborious and bacterial distribution across large geographic areas difficult to confirm. Feral swine (Sus scrofa) are an invasive species with an extensive range in the southern United States that rarely succumbs to anthrax. We present evidence that feral swine might serve as biosentinels based on comparative seroprevalence in swine from historically defined anthrax-endemic and non-anthrax-endemic regions of Texas. Overall seropositivity was 43.7% (n = 478), and logistic regression revealed county endemicity status, age-class, sex, latitude, and longitude were informative for predicting antibody status. However, of these covariates, only latitude was statistically significant (β = -0.153, p = 0.047). These results suggests anthrax exposure in swine, when paired with continuous location data, could serve as a proxy for bacterial presence in specific areas.
Keywords: Bacillus anthracis; ELISA; Sus scrofa; Texas; anthrax; bacteria; biosentinels; endemic diseases; enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; feral swine; invasive species; phylogeny; public health surveillance; risk assessment; serosurveillance; southern United States; zoonoses.