Case–Control Study of Risk Factors for Acquired Hepatitis E Virus Infections in Blood Donors, United Kingdom, 2018–2019

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Emerg Infect Dis
• Personal Author:
  Smith, Iona ; Said, Bengü ; Vaughan, Aisling ; Haywood, Becky ; Ijaz, Samreen ; Reynolds, Claire ; Brailsford, Su ; Russell, Katherine ; Morgan, Dilys
• Description:
  Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is the most common cause of acute viral hepatitis in England. Substantial yearly increases of autochthonous infections were observed during 2003-2016 and again during 2017-2019. Previous studies associated acute HEV cases with consumption of processed pork products, we investigated risk factors for autochthonous HEV infections in the blood donor population in England. Study participants were 117 HEV RNA-positive blood donors and 564 HEV RNA-negative blood donors. No persons with positive results were vegetarian; 97.4% of persons with positive results reported eating pork products. Consuming bacon (OR 3.0, 95% CI 1.7-5.5; p<0.0001), cured pork meats (OR 3.5, 95% CI 2.2-5.4; p<0.0001), and pigs' liver (OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.0-8.3; p = 0.04) were significantly associated with HEV infection. Our findings confirm previous links to pork products and suggest that appropriate animal husbandry is essential to reduce the risk for HEV infection.
• Subjects:
  Animals Blood Donors Case-Control Studies Hepatitis E Hepatitis E Virus Humans Risk Factors Rna, Viral Swine
• Source:
  Emerg Infect Dis. 27(6):1654-1661
• Pubmed ID:
  34013866
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC8153866
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  England ; United Kingdom
• Volume:
  27
• Issue:
  6
• Collection(s):
  Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:3c300e21f7b8abcc6662b35461b8dd8c934b13703c4e0096ce28d81f6e20097f
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/106888/cdc_106888_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 917.64 KB ]