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). This result suggests anthrax exposure in swine, when paired with continuous location data, could serve as a proxy to detect bacterial presence in specific areas.

炭疽是包括人类在内的许多哺乳动物的一种令人担忧的疾病。管理主要包括通过疫苗接种和跟踪临床水平观察进行预防，因为环境隔离很费力，而且很难确认大地理区域的细菌分布。野猪（Sus scrofa) 是一种在美国南部分布广泛的入侵物种，很少死于炭疽。我们提供的证据表明，基于来自德克萨斯州历史上定义的炭疽流行和非炭疽流行地区的猪的血清阳性率的比较，野猪可能作为生物哨兵。总体血清阳性率为 43.7% (n = 478)，逻辑回归显示县流行状态、年龄等级、性别、纬度和经度可提供预测抗体状态的信息。然而，在这些协变量中，只有纬度具有统计学意义（β = –0.153，p = 0.047）。这一结果表明，当与连续的位置数据配对时，猪的炭疽暴露可以作为检测特定区域细菌存在的代理。