Ocorrência de hepatite e em suínos criados em diferentes sistemas de produção

Abstract

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a zoonotic disease that affects many developing and industrialized countries. Pigs are recognized reservoir of the virus and the transmission is usually associated with faecal-oral contamination. HEV sequences have been classified into four genotypes which genotype 3 has been associated in human autochthonous cases from Europe, Asia and America including Brazil. A total of 50 pigs from 10 farms divided according to type of production system in large-scale-farms (n=5) and family-scale-farms (n=5) were investigated. Samples of liver, bile and feces and fragments of liver, small and large intestine was evaluated by nested PCR with primers targeting ORF2 region and immunohistochemistry test, respectively. A total of 44% of the pigs analyzed from family-scale-farms were considered to be HEV infected by at least one of the diagnostic techniques used. The HEV antigen was mainly detected in small intestine samples. The 8 PCR positive samples sent to phylogenetic analyses showed 7 swine HEV isolates clustered with genotype 3, subtype 3b and 1 was categorized with subtype 3f. HEV were not detected in pigs from large-scale-farms.