Hepatitis E virus (HEV), a zoonotic pathogen, is the main cause of acute hepatitis worldwide. Swine serves as the main reservoir, and its infection is mainly transmitted via fecal-oral route. Due to huge consumption of pork in China, close human-swine interactions at pig farms likely contribute to high risk in zoonotic transmission of HEV. Thus, we aim to investigate the HEV prevalence in pig farm in seven provinces across the east to west China and estimate the potential effects of swine HEV on public health in China. In this study, serum samples of pig were collected for detection of anti-HEV antibodies from the seven provinces. A high seroprevalence of 67.1% was found, and no clear difference was observed among these regions. However, the age and the breeding purpose (for meat supplier or breeding offspring) play significant roles in the risk of swine HEV infection. In addition, sequence comparison of various HEV genomes isolated in China displayed that swine HEV posed obvious threats to ruminant breeding and public health. The high level of seroprevalence of swine HEV strongly plays an important role in cross-species of HEV infection. Therefore, effective measures should be performed to prevent HEV infection from infected pigs to human and other ruminants.
Keywords: Genome; Hepatitis E virus; Seroprevalence; Swine; Zoonotic.
Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.