Meta-analysis of prevalence of bovine herpes virus 1 in cattle in Mainland China

Bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1), an important pathogen of cattle, can cause severe clinical syndromes including respiratory disease, genital disease, and late-term abortions, as well as neurological and systemic disease in cattle. For assessing the prevalence of BHV-1 infection in mainland China, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched English and Chinese literature databases for published paper regarding the prevalence of BHV-1 in cattle in China from inception to May 20, 2018. Search strings included if they reported the cattle samples of more than 30 cattle and provided information that allowed us to establish the prevalence of BHV-1. Moreover, we excluded repeated studies, reviews, other hosts studies, as well as studies with inconsistent data, incomplete information or only provided prevalence data, and out of mainland China data. We extracted how many cattle have BHV-1 infection from the obtained studies, moreover, and calculated pooled prevalence of BHV-1 infection in cattle. The data of 41 articles (including data on 43,441 cattle) are compliant with the standards. The pooled prevalence of BHV-1 in cattle in China was 40%, the pooled prevalence of BHV-1 in cattle from Northeast China (24%) was significant lower than those from other regions. In addition, the prevalence of BHV-1 was associated with publication time of paper, detection methods, age of cattle, and clinical symptoms (pneumonia, abortion etc.).Our findings suggest that BHV-1 is common in cattle in mainland China. It is necessary to monitor the prevalence of BHV-1 in cattle and the powerful and effective regulatory measures should be taken out to prevent the spread of BHV-1.