Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jul 28;17(8):1049.
doi: 10.3390/v17081049.

Detection of Porcine Circovirus Type 3 in Free-Ranging Wild Boars and Ticks in Jiangsu Province, China

Fanqi Sun  1 , Meng Li  1 , Yi Wang  1 , Wangkun Cheng  2 , Meirong Li  2 , Changlin Deng  2 , Xianwei Wang  1 , Zhen Yang  1
Affiliations

Detection of Porcine Circovirus Type 3 in Free-Ranging Wild Boars and Ticks in Jiangsu Province, China

Fanqi Sun et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Porcine circovirus type 3 (PCV3) has been detected in wild boars across many countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. However, data regarding the presence of porcine circoviruses in wild boars and ticks remain limited. In this study, we investigated the presence and genetic characteristics of PCV3 in wild boars and parasitizing ticks in Jiangsu, China. Samples, including whole blood, serum, tissues, feces, and oral fluids from wild boars, as well as ticks collected from 47 wild boars, were obtained between March 2021 and November 2022. PCR results indicated that 34.0% (16/47) of wild boars tested positive for PCV3, while ELISA detected 41.9% (18/43) seropositivity. RT-qPCR results showed that 7.2% (6/83) were positive for PCV3 in 83 analyzed tick samples, with all positive samples identified as Amblyomma testudinarium. The PCV3 genome obtained from wild boars was classified as PCV3a and was closely related to the strain identified in domestic pigs in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Collectively, these findings confirm the presence of PCV3 in wild boars in Jiangsu and suggest a possible link of PCV3 infection among domestic pigs, wild boars, and ticks, providing new insights into the transmission risk of PCV3 at wildlife-livestock-human interfaces and highlighting the genetic homology between strains from wild and domestic pigs.

Keywords: PCV3; detection; genome sequence analysis; ticks; wild boar.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of captured wild boars and swine farms (≥50 heads) in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Two PCV3-positive and two PCV3-negative wild boars lacked coordinate data. The map was constructed with QGIS software version 3.20 (QGIS, 2020). The dark red area represents Nanjing City, and the light red area indicates Jiangsu Province.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic trees based on the complete genome of PCV3 and constructed by the maximum-likelihood method in MEGA X software. Bootstrap values were based on 1000 replicates and showed each node if >70%. The PCV3/CN/Nanjing/WB/2021 strain identified in this study is highlighted with a black rectangle.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Palinski R., Piñeyro P., Shang P., Yuan F., Guo R., Fang Y., Byers E., Hause B.M. A Novel Porcine Circovirus Distantly Related to Known Circoviruses Is Associated with Porcine Dermatitis and Nephropathy Syndrome and Reproductive Failure. J. Virol. 2017;91:e01879-16. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01879-16. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Phan T.G., Giannitti F., Rossow S., Marthaler D., Knutson T.P., Li L., Deng X., Resende T., Vannucci F., Delwart E. Detection of a novel circovirus PCV3 in pigs with cardiac and multi-systemic inflammation. Virol. J. 2016;13:184. doi: 10.1186/s12985-016-0642-z. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ouyang T., Niu G., Liu X., Zhang X., Zhang Y., Ren L. Recent progress on porcine circovirus type 3. Infect. Genet. Evol. 2019;73:227–233. doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2019.05.009. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kroeger M., Temeeyasen G., Pineyro P.E. Five years of porcine circovirus 3: What have we learned about the clinical disease, immune pathogenesis, and diagnosis. Virus Res. 2022;314:198764. doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2022.198764. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Franzo G., Tucciarone C.M., Drigo M., Cecchinato M., Martini M., Mondin A., Menandro M.L. First report of wild boar susceptibility to Porcine circovirus type 3: High prevalence in the Colli Euganei Regional Park (Italy) in the absence of clinical signs. Transbound. Emerg. Dis. 2018;65:957–962. doi: 10.1111/tbed.12905. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources