Notice of RetractionDetection of Hepatitis E Virus in Pigs from Slaughterhouses in Shanghai of China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

The objective of the present study was to detect hepatitis E virus (HEV) in different samples of pigs from slaughterhouses in Shanghai, China, so as to determine the prevalence of HEV in these pigs, and genetically characterize the detected isolates. Pig bile(120), liver(120), spleen(120), mesenteric lymph node(120), faeces(126), and blood(120) samples were collected from 4 slaughterhouses lie in Shanghai suburb. A reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method was performed to detect HEV RNA from these samples. Positive RT-PCR bands specific for HEV were sequenced and the resulted sequences were phylogenetically analyzed. Our results showed that 4 bile, 4 serum, and 2 faeces samples were detected positive for HEV RNA and the positivity rate of them were 3.33% (4/120), 3.25% (4/123), and 1.59% (2/126), respectively. Bile was the most frequent specimen found to be positive in this study. Phylogenetic analyses showed that 6 of the HEV strains detected here belonged to genotype 3 while the other 4 isolates belonged to genotype 4. This confirmed that genotype 3 had become prevalent in China mainland. This study raises awareness that pork contamination with blood products, bile or faeces may pose a risk of HEV infection.