Abstract
The prevalence of the hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection in pigs in Northern Italy was serologically examined. The survey was carried out on 39 farms: 17 farrow-to-feeder, 10 farrow-to-finish, and 12 fattening enterprises. There were 1,422 sera that were tested using commercial indirect ELISA. This method originally developed for testing human sera was adapted for the analysis of pig sera. All farms except one (97.43%) and 714 sera samples (50.21%) resulted positive for anti-HEV IgG antibodies. This study confirms that HEV is widespread in pigs in Italy and might be endemic on most farms.