Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a fecal-orally transmitted foodborne viral pathogen that causes acute hepatitis in humans and is responsible for hepatitis E outbreaks worldwide. Since the discovery of HEV as a zoonotic agent, this virus has been isolated from a variety of hosts with an ever-expanding host range. Recently, a subunit HEV vaccine developed for the prevention of human disease was approv...

The hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of the main causes of enterically transmitted hepatitis worldwide. Although the mortality rates associated with HEV are generally low, they can be up to 28% in HEV-infected pregnant women, and the elderly are more susceptible. The reasons for this selective severity are unclear, partially because there is no suitable, easy-to-use model in which to study HEV in...

INTRODUCTION Data on hepatitis E virus (HEV) in Brazil are limited. We analyzed 15 years of HEV surveillance data in a major clinical laboratory in São Paulo, Brazil. METHODS The seroprevalence of HEV of 2,271 patients subjected to anti-HEV tests from 1998 to 2013 were analyzed. RESULTS HEV seroprevalence was 2.1%, and the anti-HEV IgM positivity rate was 4.9%. Six hepatitis E patients were...

BACKGROUND Recent studies indicate that 27% of Dutch blood donors have evidence of past infection with HEV. However, the low number of diagnosed HEV infections indicates either an asymptomatic course or under diagnosis. OBJECTIVES We investigated whether HEV is a cause of acute hepatitis in Dutch patients and which diagnostic modality (serology or PCR) should be used for optimal detection. ...

Asymptomatic hepatitis E virus (HEV) infections have been found in blood donors from various European countries, but the natural course is rarely specified. Here, we compared the progression of HEV viraemia, serostatus and liver-specific enzymes in 10 blood donors with clinically asymptomatic genotype 3 HEV infection, measuring HEV RNA concentrations, plasma concentrations of alanine/aspartate ...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that can cause hepatitis in an epidemic fashion. HEV usually causes asymptomatic or limited acute infections in immunocompetent individuals, whereas in immunosuppressed individuals such as transplant recipients, HEV can cause chronic infections. The risks and outcomes of HEV co-infection in patients infected with human immunodeficiency viru...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection can induce infertility and miscarriage in pregnant women and infect neonates through vertical transmission. However, the mechanism of infertility and vertical transmission remains unclear. In the present study, we evaluated the replication of HEV in the ovary and structural and molecular changes induced by HEV after intraperitoneal injection of HEV in rabbits. ...

In Europe, autochthonous hepatitis E is caused by genotype 3 hepatitis E virus (HEV) in almost all cases. A total of 15 infections with genotype 4 HEV were diagnosed in France from May 2009 to April 2012, and all but one of the HEV-4 strains implicated in these infections were genetically related and highly similar to HEV-4 sequences isolated from swine in Belgium. In addition, 5 autochthonous ...

Using a faecal suspension with high load of Hepatitis E virus (HEV) (2.0x10(7) copies ml-1, genotype 3), we developed an efficient cell-culture system for HEV in a hepatocarcinoma cell line (PLC/PRF/5). HEV progeny released in the culture medium were passaged five times successively in PLC/PRF/5 cells. The initial day of appearance and load of HEV detectable in the culture supernatant after ino...

Serum samples collected from 68 patients (age, mean +/- the standard deviation [SD], 56.3 +/- 12.8 years) at admission who were subsequently molecularly diagnosed as having hepatitis E and from 2,781 individuals who were assumed not to have been recently infected with hepatitis E virus (HEV; negative controls; 52.9 +/- 18.9 years), were tested for immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgA classes of antib...