Hepatitis E Virus Genotype 3 in Wild Rats, United States

• Published in: Emerging infectious diseases Vol. 18; no. 8; pp. 1268 - 1273
• Main Authors: Lack, Justin B., Volk, Kylie, Van Den Bussche, Ronald A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases 01.08.2012; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Subjects: Animals; Animals, Wild - virology; Disease transmission; Epidemiology; Genetic aspects; Genetic transcription; Genotype; genotype 3; Hepatitis E; Hepatitis E - epidemiology; Hepatitis E - veterinary; Hepatitis E - virology; hepatitis E virus; Hepatitis E virus - classification; Hepatitis E virus - genetics; Hepatitis E virus - isolation & purification; Infection; Liver - virology; Medical research; Medicine, Experimental; Phylogeny; rats; Rats - virology; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; RNA; RNA, Viral - genetics; Sequence Analysis, DNA; United States - epidemiology; viral RNA; viruses; Zoonoses - virology; zoonosis; United States; California
• ISSN: 1080-6040; 1080-6059; 1080-6059
• DOI: 10.3201/eid1808.120070

The role of rodents in the epidemiology of zoonotic hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection has been a subject of considerable debate. Seroprevalence studies suggest widespread HEV infection in commensal Rattus spp. rats, but experimental transmission has been largely unsuccessful and recovery of zoonotic genotype 3 HEV RNA from wild Rattus spp. rats has never been confirmed. We surveyed R. rattus and R. norvegicus rats from across the United States and several international populations by using a hemi-nested reverse transcription PCR approach. We isolated HEV RNA in liver tissues from 35 of 446 rats examined. All but 1 of these isolates was relegated to the zoonotic HEV genotype 3, and the remaining sequence represented the recently discovered rat genotype from the United States and Germany. HEV-positive rats were detected in urban and remote localities. Genetic analyses suggest all HEV genotype 3 isolates obtained from wild Rattus spp. rats were closely related.