Phylogenetic analysis reveals that Japanese encephalitis virus genotype III is still prevalent in swine herds in Sichuan province in China.

The genome of JEV strain SC201301, which was isolated from an aborted fetal piglet in 2013 in Sichuan province in China, was completely sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed. Sequence alignments showed that the SC201301 strain shared 97-100% sequence identity with other genotype III strains but showed less similarity to genotype I representative JEVs. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the SC201301 strain belonged to genotype III and was most closely related to representative strains such as SA14-14-2, HW and SH0601. Our findings suggest that JEV genotype III is still prevalent in swine herds in Sichuan province in China, and thus, there is an urgent need to monitor the infection status of JEV among swine herds in China.