HEV-Ag ELISA Kit

What is Hepatitis E virus?

While HEV infectionsendemic frequently epidemic occur mainly in developing

countriesit has also been observed in developed countries sporadically with or without a history of traveling to endemic area. Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a non-envelopedsingle-stranded RNA virus identified in 1990. There are four major genotypes of HEVbut there is only a single serotype. HEV is transmitted primarily through the fecal-oral routetransfusion possibly maternal-fetal. Infection with HEV induces acute or sub-clinical liver diseases similar to Hepatitis A. Howeverrecent studies revealed that persistent HEV infections do occurespecially in immune-suppressed casese.g. organ transplant recipients or HIV infected persons.

The overall case-fatality is 0.5~3%it is much higher (15~25%) among pregnant

women. Recentlyit is reported that Hepatitis E cases with chronic liver disease reached a mortality rate of greater than 70%. A hypothesis that HEV infection is a zoonosis was presented in 1995. Subsequentlya swine HEV later an avian HEV were identified sequenced separately in 1997 2001respectively. Since thenHEV infection include anti-HEVviremia feces excretion of HEV was observed in a wide variety of animalsi.e.swinerodentswild monkeysdeercowgoatsdogsrodents chicken in both developing developed countries.