title: Hepatitis E vaccine immunization for rabbits to prevent animal HEV infection and zoonotic transmission.
abstract: Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has become a significant global public health concern as increasing cases of acute and chronic hepatitis E are reported. HEV of animal origin was proved to be a possible source of human infection and a previous study showed that the recent licensed HEV 239 vaccine can serve as a candidate vaccine to manage animal sources of HEV infection. However, previous immunization strategy for rabbits was the same as that for human, which is too costly to conduct large-scale animal vaccination. In an effort to reduce the costs, three vaccination schemes were assessed in the present study. Forty specific pathogen-free (SPF) rabbits were divided randomly into five groups with eight animals for each and inoculated intramuscularly with different doses of HEV 239 and placebo, respectively. All animals were challenged intravenously with swine HEV-4 and rabbit HEV of different titers 7 weeks after the initial immunization and then fecal virus excretion was monitored for 10 weeks. The results indicated that immunizing rabbits with two 10μg doses of the vaccine is superior to vaccination with two 20μg doses or a single 30μg dose, which can protect rabbits against homologous and heterologous HEV infection. These findings could enable implementation of large-scale animal vaccination to prevent rabbit HEV infection and zoonotic transmission.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yulin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Junke
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China. Electronic address: lingwang@bjmu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Ling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China. Electronic address: zhuangbmu@126.com.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhuang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005243:Feces / Q000821:virology; D016751:Hepatitis E / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000662:veterinary*; D007273:Injections, Intramuscular; D010919:Placebos / Q000008:administration & dosage; D011817:Rabbits; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014614:Vaccines, Synthetic / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000276:immunology*; D014761:Viral Hepatitis Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000276:immunology*; D015047:Zoonoses / Q000517:prevention & control*
chemical_list: D010919:Placebos; D014614:Vaccines, Synthetic; D014761:Viral Hepatitis Vaccines; C577000:hecolin
keywords: HEV 239 vaccine; Hepatitis E virus; Immunization strategy; Rabbits; Zoonotic transmission