Contamination of Hepatitis E Virus in Pig Livers of Different Market Types Collected from Seven Provinces of China

Foodborne transmission of the Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is becoming an important public health problem in China, but the food associated with the HEV transmission route remains unclear. Pig liver is among the suspected food products involved in HEV transmission. Our research aimed to survey the contamination rate and genotype identification of HEV in pig livers from different types of markets in selected provinces of China. reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was used to screen for HEV in pig livers, nest RT-PCR was used for partial amplification of opren reading frame (ORF) 2, followed by sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis to determine the genotype of positive samples. A total of 787 pig liver samples from 7 provinces were collected. The average positive rate of HEV was 8.13% (64/787), Inner Mongolia (14.29%, 1/7) and Hebei province (14.29%, 23/161) showed the highest positive rate. There was a significant difference among the provinces (p < 0.01). Three major market types (wholesale market, supermarket, and butcher's shop) were included in this study, and the positive rates were 5.28% (21/398), 15.86% (23/145), and 8.20% (20/244), respectively. There was no significant difference among the three market types. Eleven of the positive samples were partially sequenced and identified genotypes 4a, 4d, and 3a.