Seroepidemiology of non-primate hepacivirus (NPHV) in Japanese native horses

Non-primate hepacivirus (NPHV) is recently identified as a closely related homologue of hepatitis C virus. The previous studies showed a high prevalence of NPHV infection among Japanese domestic horses originated from abroad. The historical distribution of NPHV among horses in Japan, therefore, is still unknown. In this study, seroepidemiological study of NPHV was conducted using 335 sera from five breeds of Japanese native horses. These horses are maintained as the pedigree and are reared apart from other horse breeds. The detection of antibodies against NPHV were conducted by western blot analysis using the recombinant protein of the NPHV core protein. The antibodies against NPHV were detected in all five breeds, 83 out of 335 (23.4%) horses. These results suggested that NPHV was circulating among Japanese native horses.