Study on the Prevalence of Hepatitis E Virus in a Swine Farm in Kunming City

PurposeTo determine the hepatitis E infection situation in a pig farm of Kunming City, Yunnan Province, further explore the virus genotype and molecular evolution, and provide a reference for the prevention and control of hepatitis E.

MethodThirty-nine fresh fecal samples were randomly collected from the target a pig farm. The reverse transcription nested polymerase chain reaction (RT-nPCR) was used to detect the ORF2 gene of swine hepatitis E virus. After cloning and sequencing, bioinformatics software was used for homology analysis and the phylogenetic tree was constructed.

ResultRT-nPCR detection results found that the positive rate was 35.9% (14/39). The analysis results showed that homologies between 14 detected strains and genotype I-IV represents were 77.4%-83.9%, 81.0%-83.2%, 78.8%-86.9% and 90.5%-98.5%, respectively, indicating that all the prevalence strains belongs to HEV type IV. Evolutionary analysis showed that YN-KM-9 is away from other prevalence strains and should belong to different sub-genotypes.

ConclusionThe HEV IV infection rate of this pig herd is relatively high, posing a potential threat to public health safety.