We examined the prevalence of hepatitis A virus (HAV) and hepatitis E virus (HEV) infections among 280 Japanese patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) and among 1,000 apparently healthy blood donors as a control. The prevalence of antibody to HAV was significantly higher among the HIV-infected patients than among the healthy donors (25.4% vs. 19.0%, P=0.025). When restricted to subjects aged <50 years, HAV antibody was detected significantly more frequently among the patients than among the donors (15.8% vs. 0.8%, P<0.0001). On the contrary, the prevalence of HEV antibody among the patients was almost equal to that among the donors (12.5% and 10.6%, respectively). HAV and HEV infections among HIV-infected patients deserve further studies.
