Epidemiology and Ecological Prevention and Control of Diseases in Traditionally Raised Tibetan Pigs: A Review

The Tibetan pig (Sus scrofa domesticus) is raised under extensive, free-range conditions on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, where it is exposed to a distinctive epidemiological landscape. In this narrative review, we searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, CNKI and Wanfang for surveys published between 1990 and 2026, extracted study-level estimates together with their denominators, assays and settings, and summarized the major diseases of Tibetan pigs and the ecological options for their control. Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus is the best-documented viral pathogen, with 38.3% RNA detection in feces (n = 193) and 39.6% seroprevalence in Nyingchi, followed by swine influenza A virus (52.0% H1N1 seropositivity; n = 421) and diarrheagenic Escherichia coli; because these figures come from different assays and populations, they are reported side-by-side rather than compared or pooled. Gastrointestinal parasites are widespread, with 90.1% prevalence in grazing herds and 60.1% in corralled herds (n = 715; an unadjusted comparison from a single Nyingchi survey). African swine fever reached Nyingchi in 2019, showing the vulnerability of extensive systems to transboundary epidemics. Zoonotic and potentially zoonotic agents, including hepatitis E virus, Toxoplasma gondii, Trichinella spp., Echinococcus granulosus and Enterocytozoon bieneusi, circulate at the livestock–wildlife–human interface. Age, housing and grazing mode, and the frequency of deworming and vaccination have been associated with infection outcomes in individual surveys, although their independent contributions remain poorly quantified. We propose, as an evidence-informed framework that remains to be validated, an integrated ecological approach spanning landscape and ecosystem, herd and farm, animal and host, surveillance and information, and governance under One Health, which adapts biosecurity to plateau production while seeking to preserve the genetic resilience and gut microbiome of the breed. Key gaps include the absence of systematic serosurveys, limited cohort data, and unquantified antimicrobial resistance dynamics in free-ranging herds.