Biomedical subjects

Harald C Worm

Publications and source records attributed to Harald C Worm.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2002

Hepatitis E and its emergence in non-endemic areas.

In areas with a tropical or subtropical climate and poor sanitary conditions, hepatitis E is the major cause of enterically transmitted non-A, non-B hepatitis, and is responsible for both waterborne outbreaks of variable magnitude and sporadic cases of acute hepatitis. The causative agent is the hepatitis E virus (HEV), a non-enveloped, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA molecule of approximately 7.2 kb in length. Recently, HEV strains have been isolated from swine in industrialized countries. In addition, cases of acute hepatitis due to novel HEV variants have been reported in humans without recognized risk factors for hepatitis E in the US, Japan and Europe. Some of the novel strains were found to be closely related to swine HEV isolates from the same area, suggesting that hepatitis E is a zoonotic disease. Thus hepatitis E is becoming an issue in countries where HEV is not, traditionally, believed to be endemic. This review summarizes the current knowledge on the transmission, structure and biology of the virus as well as diagnosis of the infection, and describes the present status in areas with a low incidence of acute hepatitis E.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Hepatitis E: an overview.

The hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a non-enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus with icosahedral symmetry. Although it is related to the alpha-virus superfamily, the HEV is classified as a separate Hepatitis E-like viruses genus. Infection in humans occurs in sporadic and epidemic forms and can cause an acute, self-limited, icteric hepatitis. Recent studies indicate the existence of a reservoir in animals.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Identification of a novel variant of hepatitis E virus in Austria: sequence, phylogenetic and serological analysis.

We isolated a novel hepatitis E virus (HEV-Au1) variant from a patient in Austria suffering from acute viral hepatitis, who had no known risk factors for acquiring hepatitis E. The clinical presentation and initial serological findings have been reported previously. In this paper we report the results of sequence and phylogenetic analysis of HEV products from viral RNA isolated from acute phase serum. The results show that HEV-Au1 is significantly divergent from other HEV isolates. The nucleotide identity of analysed fragments from the novel isolate ranges from 76.6 to 78.4% when compared to isolates from endemic regions and 84.6 to 87.9% when compared to isolates from non-endemic regions. Divergent results were obtained when serum samples taken from the convalescent phase of disease were tested with three different immunoassays (EIAs). An EIA based on United States isolate-specific peptides showed enhanced reactivity whereas EIAs based on recombinant proteins derived from prototype HEV strains from Burma and Mexico were unable to detect antibodies to HEV (anti-HEV) in late phase serum. The findings verify the presence of an additional HEV variant in an industrialized country and provide information about possible problems in detecting anti-HEV.

Acute Disease↗