Establishment and Application of a Triplex Real-Time RT-PCR Assay for Differentiation of PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV

Porcine viral diarrhea is very common in clinical practice and has caused huge losses to the pig industry. Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), porcine rotavirus (PoRV), and porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) are important pathogens of porcine viral diarrhea. Co-infection situations among these three viruses in clinics are common, which increases the difficulty of differential diagnosis. Currently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is commonly used to detect pathogens. TaqMan real-time PCR is more sensitive than conventional PCR and has better specificity and accuracy. In this study, a triplex real-time RT-PCR assay based on TaqMan probes was developed for differential detection of PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV. The triplex real-time RT-PCR assay developed in this study could not detect unrelated pathogens and showed satisfactory specificity, sensitivity, repeatability, and reproducibility with a limit of detection (LOD) of 6.0 × 101 copies/μL. Sixteen clinical samples were used to compare the results of the commercial RT-PCR kit and the triplex RT-PCR for PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV detection, and the results were completely consistent. A total of 112 piglet diarrhea samples collected from Jiangsu province were next used to study the local prevalence of PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV. The positive rates of PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV detected by the triplex real-time RT-PCR were 51.79% (58/112), 59.82% (67/112), and 2.68% (3/112), respectively. The co-infections of PEDV and PoRV were frequent (26/112, 23.21%), followed by the co-infections of PDCoV and PoRV (2/112, 1.79%). This study established a useful tool for simultaneous differentiation of PEDV, PoRV, and PDCoV in practice and provided valuable information on the prevalence of these diarrhea viral pathogens in Jiangsu province.