Screening of Ready-to-Eat Meat Products for Hepatitis E Virus in Switzerland

Abstract

Seroprevalence data for pig herds suggested that there must be a relevant reservoir for hepatitis E virus (HEV) in Switzerland. To know more about the viral presence in ready-to-eat meat products, we screened pork liver sausages and raw meat sausages from the Swiss retail market for the presence of HEV. Testing was performed with a detection method where the virus extraction step was optimized. As for the performance of the improved method, the mean recovery rate for the mengovirus process control was 24.4%, whereas for HEV-inoculated sample matrices between 10.4 and 100% were achieved. The limit of detection was about 1.56 × 103 and 1.56 × 102 genome copies per gram for liver sausages and raw meat sausages, respectively. In the screening programme, HEV-RNA was detected in 10 of total 90 (11.1%) meat products, 7 of 37 (18.9%) liver sausages, and 3 of 53 (5.7%) raw meat sausages. Virus loads of up to 5.54 log10 HEV genome copies per gram were measured. All sequences retrieved from positive samples belonged to HEV genotype 3. The significance of the presented work was a current overview of the HEV prevalence in ready-to-eat meat products on the Swiss retail marked and an improvement of the extraction efficiency of the HEV detection method.

Hepatitis E in High-Income Countries: What Do We Know? And What Are the Knowledge Gaps?

“…Another study had screened ready-to-eat meat products for Hepatitis E virus. Positive rates of 18.9% for liver sausages and 5.7% for raw meat sausages were estimated [ 138 ].…”

Seroprevalence of hepatitis E virus in dromedary camels, Bedouins, Muslim Arabs and Jews in Israel, 2009–2017

“…Human HEV infection, investigated using seroprevalence studies, was found to be more prevalent in older ages [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], lower socio-economic status [21], poorer residence areas [9,[14][15], among sheltered homeless adults [22] or uneducated people [14], specific nationalities (for example, higher in mixed race donors and ethnic groups within China [12,15], or in immigrants from Afghanistan [14]), drinking water from wells or rivers [15], consumption of meat products [7,15,17,23] especially pork [24,25] and following blood transfusions [1].…”

Patterns of mutation within an emerging endemic lineage of HEV‐3a

“…It should be noted that nonporcine transmission modes are possible and cannot be ruled out completely. However, the risk of infection remains highest through dietary sources where viral loads are known to be sufficiently large to cause an infection . Some other signs also point towards a dietary source.…”

“…However, the risk of infection remains highest through dietary sources where viral loads are known to be sufficiently large to cause an infection. 39 Some other signs also point towards a dietary source. Amongst the three main ethnic groups present in Singapore, the HEV incidence rate in Chinese was twice the rate in Indians and nearly 10 times the rate in Malays.…”