Retrospective detection and phylogenetic analysis of swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus in pigs in southern China

Abstract

Swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus (SADS‐CoV), a novel coronavirus, was first discovered in southern China in January 2017 and caused a large scale outbreak of fatal diarrheal disease in piglets. Here, we conducted a retrospective investigation of 236 samples from 45 swine farms with a clinical history of diarrheal disease to evaluate the emergence and the distribution of SADS‐CoV in pigs in China. Our results suggest that SADS‐CoV has emerged in China at least since August 2016. Meanwhile, we detected a prevalence of SADS‐CoV (43.53%), porcine deltacoronavirus (8.83%), porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV) (78.25%), rotavirus (21.77%), and transmissible gastroenteritis virus (0%), and we also found the co‐infection of SADS‐CoV and PEDV occurred most frequently with the rate of 17.65%. We screened and obtained two new complete genomes, five N and five S genes of SADS‐CoV. Phylogenetic analysis based on these sequences revealed that all SADS‐CoV sequences in this study clustered with previously reported SADS‐CoV strains to form a well defined branch that grouped with the bat coronavirus HKU2 strains. This study is the first retrospective investigation for SADS‐CoV and provides the epidemiological information of this new virus in China, which highlights the urgency to develop effective measures to control SADS‐CoV.