Emergence and Phylogenetic Analysis of a Getah Virus Isolated in Southern China

Abstract

Getah virus (GETV) has caused many outbreaks in animals in recent years. Monitoring of the virus and its related diseases is crucial to control the transmission of the virus. In the summer of 2018, we conducted routine tests on clinical samples from different pig farms in Guangxi province, South China, and isolated and characterized a GETV strain, named GX201808. Cytopathic effects were observed in BHK-21 cells inoculated with GX201808. The expression of E2 protein of GETV could be detected in virus-infected cells by indirect immunofluorescence assays. Electron microscopic analysis showed that the virus particles were spherical and ~70 nm in diameter with featured surface fibers. The multistep growth curves showed the virus propagated well in the BHK-21 cells. Molecular genetic analysis revealed that GX201808 belongs to Group 3, represented by Kochi-01-2005 isolated in Japan in 2005, and it clustered closely with the recently reported Chinese strains isolated from pigs, cattle, and foxes. A comparison of the identities of nucleotides and amino acids in the coding regions demonstrated that the GX201808 showed the highest amino acid identity (99.6%) with the HuN1 strain, a highly pathogenic isolate resulting in an outbreak of GETV infection in swine herds in Hunan province in 2017. In the present study, GETV was identified and isolated for the first time in Guangxi province of southern China, suggesting that future surveillance of this virus should be strengthened.

Establishment of a reverse transcription real-time quantitative PCR method for Getah virus detection and its application for epidemiological investigation in Shandong, China

“…What calls for special attention is that the positive specimens of mosquitoes were only detected in two coastal cities, Yantai and Qingdao, and showed a high positive rate, suggesting that coastal cities are denser with mosquitoes and need to do a more effective elimination of mosquitoes in farms. The positive detection rates of GETV are basically consistent with the results of the reported GETV prevalence survey (Dong et al, 2012;Lu et al, 2019;Ren et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2022) but only differed significantly from the positive detection rate of RT-qPCR established by Xia which reached 34.5% in swine serum (Xia et al, 2021). We analyze that this may be related to the mosquito eradication and prevention measures of different farms.…”

Molecular and serological surveillance of Getah virus in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, 2017–2020

“…GETV infection of pigs in Chinese mainland was first observed in Hunan Province in 2017, originating from Taiwan in 2002. After that, GETV has appeared in eight other provinces ( Ren et al., 2020 ; Xing et al., 2020 ; Lu et al., 2019 ). Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is the largest province in China with major animal husbandry.…”

A re-emerging arbovirus in livestock in China: Early genomic surveillance and phylogeographic analysis

“…GETV is a member of the Alphavirus genus, its pathogenicity for humans is unknown, but there may be a risk of spill-over events to humans [72]. Up to now, epidemiological surveillance studies and available GETV sequences from swine have been rare [26, 73, 74]. In this study, we perform a state-of-the-art genomic surveillance using metagenomic next-generation sequencing coupled with phylodynamic analyses.…”