Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) infection in captive white‐collared peccaries ( Pecari tajacu ) from Uruguay

Abstract

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of acute hepatitis worldwide with 3.3 million symptomatic cases per year and about 70.000 deaths (World Health Organization, 2017). In high-income countries and non-endemic regions, Hepatitis E is regarded as an emerging disease of increasing concern. In this setting, cases are mainly sporadic and autochthonous, and infection seems to occur zoonotically by direct contact or through the consumption of raw or undercooked meat from reservoir animals (Colson & Decoster, 2019). HEV belongs

Epidemiology Update of Hepatitis E Virus (HEV) in Uruguay: Subtyping, Environmental Surveillance and Zoonotic Transmission

“…HEV infection has also been identified and characterized in domestic pigs, with an antibody and RNA prevalence of 46.8% and 16.6%, respectively, and in wild boars, indicating a widespread circulation of the virus in their natural reservoirs [ 16 ]. Additionally, we showed that HEV-3 could also infect and be transmitted among white-collared peccaries (New World pigs) and spotted deer ( Axis axis ) [ 17 , 40 ]. In this work, to provide novel insights into the molecular epidemiology and transmission patterns of HEV in Uruguay we reexamined the phylogenetic relationships with updated data and additional analyses.…”

“…Unfortunately, ORF2 sequences from white-collared peccaries and spotted deer were not available for this study and this is a limitation in terms of exploring potential transmission paths involving other ecological reservoirs/hosts. However, previous analyses carried out with ORF1 partial sequences had shown close phylogenetic relationships with sequences of human origin [ 17 , 40 ].…”

“…For the detection of HEV, RNA was subjected to RT-nPCR targeting a 330-bp region within ORF2 as previously reported [ 17 ]. PCR products were gel-visualized under UV light and amplicons of the expected size were sequenced in both directions by Macrogen Inc. (Seoul, Republic of Korea).…”

“…In Uruguay, HEV-3 infections have been previously identified among human [ 15 ] and animal hosts (swine, wild boars, and white-collared peccaries) [ 16 , 17 ]. Extensive molecular and serological data have been obtained and recently we described a HEV-3 complete genome obtained from a solid organ transplant patient with chronic hepatitis E [ 18 ].…”

Tracing the History of Hepatitis E Virus Infection in Mexico: From the Enigmatic Genotype 2 to the Current Disease Situation

“…Molecular detection of HEV-RNA in clinical and epidemiological contexts pursues two main goals: diagnosis of active infections and genome sequencing for genotyping. In Mexico, only scientific studies have been published addressing molecular HEV detection, and for most Latin American countries, short partial sequences of the HEV genome are commonly reported ( Supplementary Table S1 ) [ 25 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 40 , 89 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 , 133 , 134 , 135 , 136 , 137 …”