A case of transfusion-transmitted hepatitis E caused by blood from a donor infected with hepatitis E virus via zoonotic food-borne route.

Background: Five cases of transfusion transmission of hepatitis E virus (HEV) have been reported so far. The infection routes of the causative donors remain unclear, however. Also, the progress of virus markers in the entire course of HEV infection has not been well documented.

Comparison of clinical features of acute hepatitis caused by hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotypes 3 and 4 in Sapporo, Japan.

In Japan, indigenous acute hepatitis E is not a rare disease, and is mainly caused by hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotypes 3 and 4. Whether there is a difference in clinical features between the two genotypes remains unclear. This study compares the clinical features of patients infected with the two.

Estimation of the mutation rate of hepatitis E virus based on a set of closely related 7.5-year-apart isolates from Sapporo, Japan.

Since hepatitis E virus (HEV) does not persist in infected hosts or in cultured cell lines, it has been difficult to know its spontaneous mutation rate. Recently, we identified an HEV isolate in stored serum from a patient having developed hepatitis E in 1995 (JSM-Sap95), nucleotide sequence of which showed a strong resemblance to those obtained from three patients who contracted hepatitis E in 2000 and 2002 (JKK-Sap00, JYW-Sap02, and JTS-Sap02). The remarkable nucleotide similarity together with the fact that all these patients were residents of the same city, Sapporo, prompted us to hypothesize that JKK-Sap00, JYW-Sap02 and JTS-Sap02 are descendants of JSM-Sap95.

Full-length sequences of six hepatitis E virus isolates of genotypes III and IV from patients with sporadic acute or fulminant hepatitis in Japan.

Objective: Ranges of variation and conservation in sequence need to be defined for detecting and genotyping hepatitis E virus (HEV).

Methods: Six HEV isolates from Japanese patients were sequenced over the entire genome and compared phylogenetically along with 16 reported HEV isolates, including two from pigs.

Results: Three of the six HEV isolates were of genotype III, and the remaining three were of genotype IV.

A case report: two patients with fulminant hepatitis E in Hokkaido, Japan.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) has been listed as one of the major agents that cause fulminant hepatitis in HEV-endemic areas, but not in non-endemic areas. Recently, however, we experienced two cases of fulminant hepatitis E in Hokkaido, Japan: case-1 was a 34-year-old woman and case-2, a 51-year-old man, neither having a history of travelling outside Japan or contact with travellers abroad or foreigners. HEV RNA was detected in their acute-phase serum and sequencing analyses indicated that they were infected with different strains of HEV: genotype III in case-1 and IV in case-2.