Hepatitis E in southern Vietnam: Seroepidemiology in humans and molecular epidemiology in pigs
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Viral pathogens account for a significant proportion of the burden of emerging infectious diseases in humans. The Wellcome Trust‐Vietnamese Initiative on Zoonotic Infections (WT‐VIZIONS) is aiming to understand the circulation of viral zoonotic pathogens in animals that pose a potential risk to human health. Evidence suggests that human exposure and infections with hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotypes (GT) 3 and 4 results from zoonotic transmission. Hypothesising that HEV GT3 and GT4 are circulating in the Vietnamese pig population and can be transmitted to humans, we aimed to estimate the seroprevalence of HEV exposure in a population of farmers and the general population. We additionally performed sequence analysis of HEV in pig populations in the same region to address knowledge gaps regarding HEV circulation and to evaluate if pigs were a potential source of HEV exposure. We found a high prevalence of HEV GT3 viral RNA in pigs (19.1% in faecal samples and 8.2% in rectal swabs) and a high HEV seroprevalence in pig farmers (16.0%) and a hospital‐attending population (31.7%) in southern Vietnam. The hospital population was recruited as a general‐population proxy even though this particular population subgroup may introduce bias. The detection of HEV RNA in pigs indicates that HEV may be a zoonotic disease risk in this location, although a larger sample size is required to infer an association between HEV positivity in pigs and seroprevalence in humans.
Date Issued
2018-02-01
Date Acceptance
2017-06-01
Citation
Zoonoses and Public Health, 2018, 65 (1), pp.43-50
ISSN
0931-1793
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
43
End Page
50
Journal / Book Title
Zoonoses and Public Health
Volume
65
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2017 The Authors. Zoonoses and Public Health Published by Blackwell Verlag GmbH
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Wellcome Trust
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000419943900034&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Grant Number
093724/E/10/Z
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Infectious Diseases
Veterinary Sciences
hepatitis E virus
human
pigs
prevalence
seroprevalence
Vietnam
zoonosis
E VIRUS
PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS
BLOOD-DONORS
SEROPREVALENCE
TRANSMISSION
PREVALENCE
SEQUENCES
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2017-06-09