Rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) and rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV): a review

1. Natural history2. Aetiological agent3. Clinical signs and lesions4. Epidemiology5. Virus life cycle6. Mechanisms of resistance to RHD7. Genetic diversity/RHDV evolution7.1. Pathogenic RHDV7.2. Non-pathogenic rabbit calicivirus8. Host-virus co-evolution9. Prevention, control and vaccination10. Therapeutic applications of RHDV11. Conclusions12. List of abbreviations13. Competing interests14. Authors' contributions15. Acknowledgements16. ReferencesIn the 1980s, the European rabbit populations were devastated by a new viral disease characterised by being extremely lethal and highly contagious in both domestic and wild rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). The first outbreak of this new disease, designated as rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD), was noticed in 1984 in the Jiangsu Province of the People's Republic of China within a group of commercially-bred Angora rabbits imported from Germany [1]. In less than a year, RHD killed 140 million domestic rabbits in China and spread over an area of 50 000 km2 [1,2]. Korea was the next country to report RHD outbreaks which were associated with rabbit fur importation from China [3]. The disease then appeared in Europe and was first reported in Italy in 1986 [4] from where it spread to the rest of Europe, becoming endemic in several countries. In the Iberian Peninsula, where European rabbits originated and where they constitute a key species of the ecosystem [5], the first outbreaks date back to 1988 for Spain [6] and to 1989 for Portugal [7] and caused severe reduction of wild populations [8,9]. At the same time, domestic populations from several countries in North Africa experienced RHD outbreaks [10]. In the Americas, the first outbreaks were recorded in 1988 in Mexico following the importation of rabbit products from China [11]. Nevertheless, Mexico is currently the only country that has managed to successfully eradicate RHD with the last outbreak having occurred in 1992 [11]. This successful eradication of the disease might cor