Acute diarrhea outbreaks caused by PEDV have been observed in various pig-breeding provinces of China since December 2010.

A paper in Archives in Virology by researchers including Xiao-meng Wang examined endemic strains of PEDV isolated from different areas, and the complete genome sequences of 10 isolates were determined.

The aim was to characterize genetically the current Chinese field isolates of PEDV to understand better their epidemiology and genetic diversity.

Sequence analysis showed that 10 post-2010 isolates shared high homology with each other and were always clustered together with the virulent DR13 strains (South Korea) and/or one earlier Chinese strain, CH-S, in phylogenetic analysis.

All post-2010 isolates possessed common sequence changes in each gene.

Wang and co-authors say thier results suggest that current Chinese PEDV isolates originated from either South Korean and/or Chinese ancestors that underwent some genetic variation, thereby forming a new PEDV genotype in China.

Reference

^{Wang X., B. Niu, H. Yan, D. Gao, X. Yang, L. Chen, H. Chang, J. Zhao and C. Wang. 2013. Genetic properties of endemic Chinese porcine epidemic diarrhea virus strains isolated since 2010. Archives of Virology. June 2013}