Monitoring of hepatitis E virus in wastewater can identify clinically relevant variants.
Liver Int
; 44(3): 637-643, 2024 Mar.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38291853
ABSTRACT
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is prevalent worldwide and can cause persistent infection with severe morbidity. Antiviral treatment approaches can lead to the emergence of viral variants encoding escape mutations that may impede viral clearance. The frequency of these variants remains unknown in the human population as well as environment due to limited comprehensive data on HEV diversity. In this study, we investigated the HEV prevalence and diversity of circulating variants in environmental samples, that is, wastewater and rivers from North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. HEV prevalence could be determined with 73% of samples tested positive for viral RNA via qRT-PCR. Using high-throughput sequencing, we were able to assess the overall genetic diversity in these samples and identified the presence of clinically relevant variants associated with drug resistance. In summary, monitoring variants from environmental samples could provide valuable insights into estimating HEV prevalence and identifying circulating variants that can impact treatment outcome.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Hepatitis E virus
/
Hepatitis E
Type of study:
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Liver Int
Journal subject:
GASTROENTEROLOGIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: