The serological prevalence and genetic diversity of hepatitis E virus in farmed rabbits in China

▶ We detected 1094 serum samples from various breeds of rabbits across 10 counties in China. ▶ The overall positive rates of HEV antibody and antigen were 15.4% and 3.7% respectively. ▶ The partial HEV RNA sequences were determined in 22 samples. ▶ In the phylogenetic tree, all the sequences clustered with known rabbit HEV strains in a branch separated from genotypes 1 to 4. ▶ Rabbit HEV is prevalent in farmed rabbits in China.