Abstract
BackgroundGetah virus (GETV) is a neglected mosquito-borne Alphavirus that causes pyrexia, body rash, and leg oedema in horses and foetal death and reproductive disorders in pigs. Infected animals may play a critical role in the amplification and circulation of the virus. The present study aimed to investigate GETV infection in clinically infected cattle and vector mosquito species in northeastern China.ResultsSerum samples were collected from beef cattle that presented sudden onset of fever in forest grazing areas, and metagenomic sequencing was conducted, revealing 29 contigs from ten serum samples matching the GETV genome. Quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR) was performed with GETV RNA from 48 beef cattle serum samples, showing that the overall prevalence of GETV in the beef cattle samples was 6.25% (3/48). Serological investigation indicated that GETV neutralizing antibodies were detected in 83.3% (40/48, 95% CI 67–100) of samples from the study region. The GETV JL1808 strain was isolated from clinically infected cattle showing fever. Sequence comparisons showed high identity with the HuN1 strain, a highly pathogenic swine epidemic isolate obtained in Hunan province in 2017, at the nucleotide level (99.5%) and at the deduced amino acid level (99.7–99.9%). The phylogenetic analysis of JL1808 clustered in Group III, and also revealed a close genetic relationship with the HuN1 strain. Additionally, about 12,000 mosquitoes were trapped in this region. The presence of GETV infection was detected in mosquitoes, suggesting that the minimum infection rate (MIR) was 1.50‰, with MIRs of 1.67‰ in Culex pseudovishnui, 1.60‰ in Culex tritaeniorhynchus, and 1.21‰ in Anopheles sinensis.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of GETV infection in cattle. These results demonstrated that a highly pathogenic, mosquito-borne swine GETV can infect and circulate in cattle, implying that it is necessary to conduct surveillance of GETV infection in animals in northeastern China.
Highlights
Getah virus (GETV) is a neglected mosquito-borne Alphavirus that causes pyrexia, body rash, and leg oedema in horses and foetal death and reproductive disorders in pigs
A total of 48 cattle serum samples were detected by Quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR) and neutralizing antibody analyses
The results showed that a total of 3 sick beef cattle were positive by RT-qPCR
Summary
Molecular and serological assays for samples In 2018, we have collected blood samples from 48 beef cattle in the Jiaohe forest areas. A total of 48 cattle serum samples were detected by RT-qPCR and neutralizing antibody analyses. GETV neutralizing antibodies were detected in 83.3% (40/48; 95% CI 67–100) of the beef cattle serum samples. Regarding GETV neutralizing antibody titres, beef cattle serum samples with titres between 1:160 and 1:320 were classified as medium-titre samples and those with titres between 1:640 and 1:1280 were classified as high-titre samples; medium-titre samples accounted for 33.3% (16/48; 95% CI 28–38) of the positive specimens, and high-titre samples accounted for 35.4% (17/48, 95% CI 16–55) of the positive specimens (Table 1). Sequence comparisons showed high identity with the swine epidemic strain (HuN1) at the nucleotide level (99.5%) and at the deduced amino acid level in non-structural polyproteins (99.7%) and structural polyproteins (99.9%), respectively (Table 3). Phylogenetic analysis of the complete genome and E2 gene revealed that the JL1808 strain was most similar to the recent epidemic HuN1 strain [9] (Fig. 1 a and b)
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