Influenza D Virus in Animal Species in Guangdong Province, Southern China

Abstract

Molecular tests revealed influenza D viruses of D/OK lineage widely circulating in farmed animal species in Guangdong Province, southern China. In particular, we found high levels of influenza D virus infection in goats and pigs. We also detected viral RNA in serum specimens and feces of animals with certain severe diseases.

Keywords: American Landrace pigs; Asian buffalo; China; D/OK lineage; Holstein dairy cattle; hemagglutinin-esterase-fusion gene; hybrid goats; influenza; influenza D virus; viruses; yellow cattle; zoonoses.

Figure 1

Farm locations for study of influenza D viruses in cattle, goats, buffalo, and pigs, Guangdong Province, China.

Figure 2

Phylogenetic analysis of viruses from study of influenza D viruses in cattle, goats, buffalo, and pigs in Guangdong Province and neighboring provinces, China, compared with reference viruses. Partial hemagglutinin-esterase-fusion gene sequences (496 bp) were aligned by using ClustalW implemented in DNAStar software (DNAStar, Madison, WI, USA), and the phylogenetic tree was obtained using neighbor-joining method within MEGA 5.1 software (http://www.megasoftware.net). Numbers at nodes are percentages of bootstrap values obtained by repeated analyses (1,000 times) to generate majority consensus tree. Only bootstrap scores of at least 50 were retained. Scale bar indicates 0.5% nucleotide sequence divergence. Gray shading indicates viruses from this study; reference viruses obtained from the United States are marked with ♦; from China, ■; from Italy, ▲; from Mexico, ▼; from France, □; and from Japan ●. Note that D/swine/Guangdong/YS1/2016 and D/swine/Guangdong/YS2/2016 are from the same farm; D/swine/Guangdong/P8/2016 and D/swine/Guangdong/P14/2016 are from the same farm; D/swine/Guangdong/U1/2016 and D/swine/Guangdong/U16/2016 are from the same farm; D/bovine/Guangdong/LG2/2016, D/bovine/Guangdong/LG5/2016 and D/bovine/Guangdong/LG9/2016 are from the same farm; D/bovine/Guangdong/QQ1/2016, D/bovine/Guangdong/QQ4/2016, D/bovine/Guangdong/QQ7/2016 and D/bovine/Guangdong/QQ12/2016 are from the same farm; D/bovine/Guangdong/RS1/2016 and D/bovine/Guangdong/RS4/2016 are from the same farm.