Susceptibility of Chickens to Porcine Deltacoronavirus Infection

Liang Liang,Gao Gao,Wang Wang,Hu Hu,Guo Guo,Wei Wei,Zhang Zhang,Li Li,Ding Ding

doi:10.3390/v11060573

Liang Liang, Gao Gao + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/v11060573

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Journal: Viruses	Publication Date: Jun 21, 2019
Citations: 109	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Henan Agricultural University, Sino Biological (China)

Abstract

Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is a novel swine enteropathogenic coronavirus with worldwide distribution. PDCoV belongs to the Deltacoronavirus (DCoV) genus, which mainly includes avian coronaviruses (CoVs). PDCoV has the potential to infect human and chicken cells in vitro, and also has limited infectivity in calves. However, the origin of PDCoV in pigs, the host range, and cross-species infection of PDCoV still remain unclear. To determine whether PDCoV really has the ability to infect chickens in vivo, the three lines of chicken embryos and specific pathogen free (SPF) chickens were inoculated with PDCoV HNZK-02 strain to investigate PDCoV infection in the current study. Our results indicated that PDCoV can infect chicken embryos and could be continuously passaged on them. Furthermore, we observed that PDCoV-inoculated chickens showed mild diarrhea symptoms and low fecal viral RNA shedding. PDCoV RNA could also be detected in multiple organs (lung, kidney, jejunum, cecum, and rectum) and intestinal contents of PDCoV-inoculated chickens until 17 day post-inoculation by real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR). A histology analysis indicated that PDCoV caused mild lesions in the lung, kidney, and intestinal tissues. These results prove the susceptibility of chickens to PDCoV infection, which might provide more insight about the cross-species transmission of PDCoV.

Highlights

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses that can infect and cause diseases in avian and mammal species, including humans [1,2]
Our results showed that the Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) RNAs could be detected in these three kinds of embryos at each passage, but it did not induce visible pathological changes and death in embryos
There exhibits an obvious tendency for CoVs to engage in cross-species transmission, like the SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV [26,30]

Summary

Introduction

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses that can infect and cause diseases in avian and mammal species, including humans [1,2]. CoVs contain the largest known RNA genomes and can be genetically divided into four genera; namely, Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus, and Deltacoronavirus [3]. Deltacoronavirus (DCoV) genus was mainly discovered in a variety of avian species and pigs [4,5]. Porcine DCoV (PDCoV) was first detected in pigs during a molecular surveillance of CoVs in mammals and birds in Hong Kong in 2012 [5], while the first PDCoV outbreak in swine herds was reported in 2014 in the United States [6,7,8]. PDCoV can cause severe diarrhoea, vomiting, and dehydration in suckling and nursing piglets, and the clinical symptoms are indistinguishable

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