Pseudorabies virus infection in hunting dogs in Oita, Japan: Report from a prefecture free from Aujeszky's disease in domestic pigs

Abstract

We isolated two pseudorabies virus (PRV) isolates (designated OT-1 and OT-2) from two hunting dogs exhibiting neurological manifestations after eating the flesh of wild boar hunted in Oita prefecture, Kyushu Island, Japan. The isolates corresponded to a previously reported PRV (MY-1 strain) isolated from a hunting dog in neighboring Miyazaki prefecture, and it clustered into genotype II based on the glycoprotein C sequence. Our results suggest that this common PRV strain may have been maintained in wild boars on Kyushu Island even though domestic pigs in this area have attained an Aujeszky's disease-free status.

Keywords: Aujeszky’s disease (AD); hunting dog; pseudorabies virus (PRV); wild boar.

Fig. 1.

Phylogenetic analyses based on the partial nucleotide sequences of the pseudorabies virus (PRV) glycoprotein C (gC, UL44) gene. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using the partial 927-bp nucleotide sequences of the gC gene of OT-1, OT-2, and other strains isolated globally. Genotype I consists of PRV strains isolated from European and American countries, as well as a PRV strain isolated in Japan in 1981. Genotype II consists of PRV strains isolated from China and Japan (since 2015). The scale bar indicates the number of substitutions per site. All bootstrap values from 1,000 replications are presented on the corresponding nodes. The two isolates identified in this study are OT-1 (GenBank accession no. LC570808) and OT-2 (LC570809). Asterisks (*) denote the PRV isolates in this study.