Study on prevalence and genotype of hepatitis E virus isolated from Rex Rabbits in Beijing, China

Abstract

The prevalence of positive serum anti-HEV from rex rabbits was 54.62% (65/119). The detection rate of HEV RNA using ORF2 primers was 6.96% (8/115) amongst rabbit faecal samples. All eight amplicons shared 98.3-100% nucleotide homology with each other and had identities of 75.8-78.6%, 73.9-75.0%, 77.5-81.0%, 74.2-78.6% and 54.8-57.6% with the corresponding regions of genotypes 1-4 and avian HEV, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the eight sequences formed one individual branch and were on the same branch with GDC9 and GDC46, both of which were reported to be a novel genotype of HEV isolated from rabbits. The conclusion is that this study provides further information about HEV infecting rabbits, which may be a new animal host of HEV, as well as genetical evidence of a new mammalian genotype of HEV.