Why the study?
Despite the clinical importance of RVC infection causing acute gastroenteritis in neonatal piglets, its distribution and prevalence in pig populations in most African countries remains unknown.
This study provides the first full genome sequence of African rotavirus C strains and demonstrates a high prevalence (53.1%) of infection in Zambian pig populations.
Documents RVC in Zambian pigs; leaves open prevalence, strain diversity, and clinical impact in African swine.
Rotavirus C (RVC) causes acute gastroenteritis in neonatal piglets. Despite the clinical importance of RVC infection, the distribution and prevalence in pig populations in most African countries remains unknown. In this study, we identified RVC in Zambian pigs by metagenomic analysis. The full genome sequence of the RVC revealed two different VP4 sequences, implying that two different RVC strains (ZP18-77-c1 and ZP18-77-c2) were present in the same sample. Genetic analyses demonstrated that all segments of ZP18-77-c1 and ZP18-77-c2 showed high nucleotide sequence identities (87.7-94.5%) to known porcine RVC strains, and ZP18-77-c1 and ZP18-77-c2 strains were assigned to genotype constellations, G1-P[4]/P[14]-I13-R5-C5-M1-A7-N9-T10-E5-H1. We further screened RVC genomes among pig feces collected in Zambia (n = 147) by RT-qPCR, and 78 samples (53.1%) were positive. This study demonstrated the first full genome sequence of African RVC strains with a relatively high prevalence of RVC infection in the pig populations in Zambia.
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Harima et al. (2024) studied this question.
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