Prevalence of antibody to hepatitis E virus among pet dogs in the Jiang-Zhe area of China.
In order to investigate the prevalence of HEV infection and immunity in pet dogs in the Jiang-Zhe area of China, we examined 192 dog serum samples collected from 11 animal hospitals in this area for anti-HEV IgG and HEV RNA, using ELISA and RT-PCR assays, respectively. Two dogs were injected intravenously with swine HEV to obtain anti-HEV antibody positive serum for ELISA assay. After the ELISA assay, 26 samples showing OD values higher than 0.20 were selected and examined by Dot-blot assay, and 88.5% (23/26) were confirmed to be positive for anti-HEV IgG. Although our results indicated swine HEV could experimentally induce anti-HEV IgG in the serum, we failed to detect HEV RNA in the serum samples from either the 2 intravenously injected dogs or 192 serum samples collected from animal hospitals. This implied that dog may not be a reservoir of HEV in this area.
Liu
Junfeng
J
Group of Zoonosis and Comparative Medicine, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai JiaoTong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, PR China.
Zhang
Wen
W
Shen
Quan
Q
Yang
Shixing
S
Huang
Fen
F
Li
Peifeng
P
Guo
Xuefeng
X
Yang
Zhibiao
Z
Cui
Li
L
Zhu
Jianguo
J
Hua
Xiuguo
X
D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D004283:Dog Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000821:virology; D004285:Dogs; D006508:Hepatitis Antibodies / Q000097:blood*; D016751:Hepatitis E / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000276:immunology* / Q000662:veterinary*; D016752:Hepatitis E virus / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D006762:Hospitals, Animal; D015995:Prevalence; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000097:blood; D016036:Seroepidemiologic Studies
D006508:Hepatitis Antibodies; D012367:RNA, Viral