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Swine and rabbits are the main reservoirs of hepatitis E virus in China: detection of HEV RNA in feces of farmed and wild animals

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Abstract

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection is recognized as a zoonosis. The prevalence of HEV RNA and anti-HEV antibodies in many animal species has been reported, but the host range of HEV is unclear. The aims of this study were to investigate HEV infection in various animal species and to determine the reservoirs of HEV. Eight hundred twenty-two fecal samples from 17 mammal species and 67 fecal samples from 24 avian species were collected in China and tested for HEV RNA by RT-nPCR. The products of PCR were sequenced and analyzed phylogenetically. The positive rates of HEV RNA isolated from pigs in Beijing, Shandong, and Henan were 33 %, 30 %, and 92 %, respectively, and that from rabbits in Beijing was 5 %. HEV RNA was not detectable in farmed foxes, sheep or sika deer, or in wild animals in zoos, including wild boars, yaks, camels, Asiatic black bears, African lions, red pandas, civets, wolves, jackals and primates. Sequence analysis revealed that swine isolates had 97.8 %-98.4 % nucleotide sequence identity to genotype 4d isolates from patients in Shandong and Jiangsu of China. Phylogenetic analysis showed that swine HEV isolates belong to genotype 4, including subgenotype 4h in Henan and 4d in Beijing and Shandong. The rabbit HEV strains shared 93 %-99 % nucleotide sequence identity with rabbit strains isolated from Inner Mongolia. In conclusion, swine and rabbits have been confirmed to be the main reservoirs of HEV in China.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 81271827) and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (Grant Number 20120001110098). The authors are grateful to Dr. Baoming Liu (Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Biochemistry, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, TN, USA) for proofreading the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, 38 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, China

    Junke Xia, Hang Zeng, Lin Liu, Yulin Zhang, Peng Liu, Lin Wang, Ling Wang & Hui Zhuang

  2. Institute of Hepatology, The 81st Hospital of PLA, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Jiabao Geng

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  1. Junke Xia
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  2. Hang Zeng
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  3. Lin Liu
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  4. Yulin Zhang
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  7. Lin Wang
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Correspondence to Ling Wang or Hui Zhuang.

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Xia, J., Zeng, H., Liu, L. et al. Swine and rabbits are the main reservoirs of hepatitis E virus in China: detection of HEV RNA in feces of farmed and wild animals. Arch Virol 160, 2791–2798 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2574-0

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