Abstract
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is highly prevalent in farm pigs worldwide and an increasing body of data from industrialised countries suggests that it is an agent of a porcine zoonosis. We used in-house real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction to study HEV infection in 4-26-week-old pigs on a pig farm in New Caledonia, Oceania, for which no data are available. HEV RNA was detected in faeces from 6 of 92 (6.5%) pigs tested and all were 9-16 weeks old. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the HEV open reading frame 1 and 2 sequences recovered in this study formed a single cluster among HEV genotype 3 subtype f. Our work shows for the first time that pigs are a reservoir for HEV in New Caledonia. Further studies are needed to assess the prevalence and phylogenetic relationships of HEV in pigs and humans in this French overseas collectivity.
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