Recent advances in prevalence and human infection of rat hepatitis E virus / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

In 2009, hepatitis E virus was first detected in wild rats ( Rattus norvegicus) in Germany and was designated as rat hepatitis E virus (rat HEV). Since then, rat HEV has been detected in various murine rodents in many geographic regions. The potential of rat HEV to infect human has been ignored as the viral genomic nucleotide sequences of rat HEV and the HEV strains of human sources are only about 50%-56% identical. Recently, a few clinical hepatitis E cases with chronic or acute rat HEV infection have been reported and raised many concerns. Here, advances in studies of the prevalence of rat HEV in animals and the clinical hepatitis E cases caused by rat HEV were reviewed.