A novel genotype of hepatitis E virus prevalent among farmed rabbits in China

✍ Scribed by Chenyan Zhao; Zhongren Ma; Tim J. Harrison; Ruofei Feng; Chuntao Zhang; Zilin Qiao; Jinping Fan; Hongxia Ma; Mingsheng Li; Aijing Song; Youchun Wang

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 166 KB
• Volume: 81
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0146-6615
• DOI: 10.1002/jmv.21536

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In total, 335 serum samples were collected from rabbits from two farms in Gansu province, China, and tested for anti‐hepatitis E virus (HEV) antibody using EIA and for HEV RNA using nested RT‐ PCR with ORF2 primers. The overall prevalence of anti‐HEV antibody and HEV RNA was 57.0% (191/335) and 7.5% (25/335), respectively. The positivity rate of HEV RNA in the anti‐HEV antibody negative group (7.6% (11/144)) did not differ significantly from that in the positive group (7.3% (14/191)). The concordance between HEV RNA and anti‐HEV antibody was 43.3% with no significant correlation (P < 0.05). All 25 amplicons from the ORF2 region were cloned and sequenced. On the basis of nucleotide sequence comparison, they had 84–99% identity to each other and 73–77%, 70–76%, 75–82%, 71–77%, and 53–65% with the corresponding regions of genotypes 1, 2, 3, 4, and avian HEV, respectively. Samples that were positive with the ORF2 primers were amplified using ORF1 region primers; 17 were positive and shared 71–78%, 73–76%, 74–82%, 72–78%, and 39–58% identity with the corresponding regions of genotypes 1, 2, 3, 4, and avian HEV, respectively, at the nucleotide level. Two representative full‐length sequences were determined. These two sequences shared 85% identity with each other and had 74%, 73%, 78–79%, 74–75%, and 46–47% identity to full‐length genotypes 1, 2, 3, 4, and avian HEV, respectively. Thus, the sequences isolated from the rabbits represent a novel genotype of HEV. This study provides novel information about HEV genotypes infecting rabbits as well as evidence of a new mammalian genotype of HEV. J. Med. Virol. 81:1371–1379, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.