Serological report of pandemic and seasonal human influenza virus infection in dogs in southern China

Abstract

From January to July 2012, we looked for evidence of subclinical A (H1N1) pdm09 and seasonal human influenza viruses infections in healthy dogs in China. Sera from a total of 1920 dogs were collected from Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. We also examined archived sera from 66 dogs and cats that were collected during 2008 from these provinces. Using hemagglutination inhibition (HI) and microneutralization (MN) assays, we found that only the dogs sampled in 2012 had elevated antibodies (≥ 1:32) against A(H1N1)pdm09 virus and seasonal human influenza viruses: Of the 1920 dog sera, 20.5 % (n = 393) had elevated antibodies against influenza A(H1N1) pdm09 by the HI assay, 1.1 % (n = 22), and 4.7 % (n = 91) of the 1920 dogs sera had elevated antibodies against human seasonal H1N1 influenza virus and human seasonal H3N2 influenza virus by the HI assay. Compared with dogs that were raised on farms, dogs that were raised as pets were more likely to have elevated antibodies against A(H1N1)pdm09 and seasonal human influenza viruses. Seropositivity was highest among pet dogs, which likely had more diverse and frequent exposures to humans than farm dogs. These findings will help us better understand which influenza A viruses are present in dogs and will contribute to the prevention and control of influenza A virus. Moreover, further in-depth study is necessary for us to understand what roles dogs play in the ecology of influenza A.

Identification of the IFN-β response in H3N2 canine influenza virus infection

“…Sun et al, 2013;Y. Sun et al, 2014;Yin et al, 2014). However, most of these cases were sporadic infections, and only H3N2 and H3N8 have established as canine influenza viruses (CIVs).…”

Detection prevalence of H5N1 avian influenza virus among stray cats in eastern China

“…Since domestic dogs or cats are in close contact with the human environment, they are subsequently exposed to human influenza viruses. Seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses are predominately prevailing in humans in southern China, and the serosurveillance of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 and seasonal human influenza viruses is significantly higher than the detection results from Sun et al The seropositivity was highest among pet dogs which likely had more diverse and frequent exposures to humans than did farm dogs [Sun et al, ; Yin et al, ]. However, the dogs that lived in live poultry markets (LPMs) and poultry farms in the rural areas in China where novel H7N9 AIV surviving had been detected no evidence of H7N9 infection, and dogs that lived in LPMs were higher than the dogs that were raised in poultry farms against avian H9N2, avian H5N1, and canine H3N2 viruses.…”

Influenza A Virus Infection in Cats and Dogs: A Literature Review in the Light of the “One Health” Concept

“…To date, serological evidence suggest that cats and dogs could be infected worldwide with human seasonal A(H1N1)pdm09 and H3N2 strains probably by direct transmission from their owners (31,32,82,83). Several points support this hypothesis: (i) in most cases reported so far, animal caretakers or owners had themselves history of flu-like illness and for some of them confirmed by PCR; (ii) susceptibility of cats and dogs correlated well with influenza prevalence in the human population and even followed a seasonality pattern as in humans, and (iii) virus isolation and sequence analysis of all eight genes of the canine isolates showed high nucleotide similarity thus suggesting that human viruses could therefore jump into dogs and cats, without prior adaptation.…”