High prevalence of Hepatitis E virus in French domestic pigs

Nicolas Rose (1) , Aurélie Lunazzi (2, 3) , Virginie Dorenlor (1) , Thiziri Merbah (3) , Florent Eono (1) , Marc Eloit (4) , François Madec (1) , Nicole Pavio (3)

1 Laboratoire de Ploufragan - Plouzané
2 VIM (UR 0892) - Unité de recherche Virologie et Immunologie Moléculaires
3 VIRO - Virologie UMR1161
4 ENVA - École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort

The importance of the domestic pig reservoir for Hepatitis E virus (HEV) was assessed by estimating the seroprevalence and prevalence of HEV contaminated livers in French slaughter-aged pigs. 6565 sera and 3715 livers were randomly sampled from 186 pig farms throughout the country. Taking the sampling design into account, the farm-level seroprevalence was 65% (95% CI 57–74) and 31% (95% CI 24–38) of the slaughter-aged pigs had antibodies against HEV. The individual prevalence of HEV RNA positive livers was 4% (95% CI 2–6) and 24% (95% CI 17–31) of the farms had at least 1 positive liver. Most isolates were of genotype 3f (76.7%) with smaller amounts of 3c (18.6%) and 3e (4.6%). The high prevalence of HEV in pigs and the similarities between HEV subtypes from pigs and humans corroborates the possible zoonotic origin of some HEV autochthonous infections.

Mots clés: Hepatitis E; pig; animal reservoir; zoonosis; Public health

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Nicolas Rose, Aurélie Lunazzi, Virginie Dorenlor, Thiziri Merbah, Florent Eono, et al.. High prevalence of Hepatitis E virus in French domestic pigs. Comparative Immunology, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, 2011, pp.419-427. ⟨10.1016/j.cimid.2011.07.003⟩. ⟨hal-01191111⟩