Molecular Prevalence Study of QX-like Infectious Bronchitis Virus in Japan from 2016 to 2023.

Infectious bronchitis is an acute and highly contagious disease in chickens caused by the infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which has caused significant economic losses to the poultry industry worldwide. The antigenic variant, the QX-like genotype (GI-19 lineage), has been currently reported in epidemics in East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. We first reported an epidemic of Japanese QX-like IBVs genetically related to Chinese and South Korean strains in the Kyushu region of Japan in 2020.