HoBi‐like pestivirus infection leads to bovine death and severe respiratory disease in China

HoBi-like pestivirus is an emerging atypical pestivirus in cattle and small ruminants, causing clinical signs similar to those observed in bovine viral diarrhoea virus infections. Natural infection of HoBi-like pestivirus has been reported in cattle herds and small ruminants in multiple countries in South America, Europe and Asia. However, HoBi-like pestiviruses were only identified from contaminated bovine serum and small ruminants in China. So far, no clinical cases induced by HoBi-like pestivirus infection were reported in Chinese cattle herds. Here, for the first time, we reported natural infection of HoBi-like pestivirus in a cattle herd in China. Sick cattle with severe respiratory and diarrhoea and high fatality rate were found in a beef cattle herd in Shandong province in November 2017. RT-PCR, viral isolation, sequencing and phylogenetic analysis showed that the primary causative agent was HoBi-like pestivirus. The isolated HoBi-like pestivirus strain, SDJN-China-2019, shared 94.1%–97.5% homology with the LV168-20_16RN strain from Brazil in nucleotide of 5′UTR, Npro and E2 while it shared only 88.5%–92.1% homology with Asian HoBi-like virus strain Th/04-Khonkaen. Multiple unique mutations of amino acid were observed in Npro and E2 proteins of SDJN-China-2019, which were different from that of other reference strains. In summary, this study provides the first evidence of HoBi-like pestivirus infection in Chinese cattle herds, raising potential threat to the cattle industry in China.