1. Non-Travel-Associated Hepatitis E in England and Wales: Demographic, Clinical, and Molecular Epidemiological Characteristics.
- Author
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Ijaz, Samreen, Arnold, Eve, Banks, Malcolm, Bendall, Richard P., Cramp, Matthew E., Cunningham, Richard, Dalton, Harry R., Harrison, Tim J., Hill, Simon F., MacFarlane, Lorna, Meigh, Rolf E., Shafi, Shuja, Sheppard, Martin J., Smithson, Jacquie, Wilson, Melanie P., and Chong-Gee Teo
- Subjects
HEPATITIS E ,VIRAL hepatitis ,LIVER diseases ,PATIENTS - Abstract
Between 1996 and 2003, 186 cases of hepatitis E were serologically diagnosed. Of these, 17 (9%) were not associated with recent travel abroad. Patients were 155 years old (range, 56-82 years old) and tended to be male (76%). Two patients presented with fulminant hepatitis. A total of 129 (69%) cases were associated with recent travel to countries where hepatitis E virus (HEV) is hyperendemic. Compared with patients with travelassociated disease, patients with non-travel-associated disease were more likely to be older, living in coastal or estuarine areas, not of South Asian ethnicity, and infected by genotype 3 strains of HEV. The genotype 3 subgenomic nucleotide sequences were unique and closely related to those from British pigs. Patients infected by HEV indigenous to England and Wales tended to belong to a distinct demographic group, there were multiple sources of infection, and pigs might have been a viral reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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