A case of acute hepatitis E (genotype 4) after eating uncooked meat and liver of wild boar captured in Yamaguchi prefecture, with a viral genome relatively closer to a Chinese isolate than to Japanese strains

Abstract

A 39 year-old male with liver dysfunction was admitted to our hospital and diagnosed of acute hepatitis because of detection of HEV-RNA in his serum. He had a history of eating uncooked meat and liver of wild boar captured in the western district of Yamaguchi prefecture, about one month before the onset of general fatigue. Analysis of HEV genome sequence revealed that the HEV isolated from the present case (JTF-Yamag11, AB698954) belonged to genotype 4 but showed poor homologies to Japanese genotype 4 strains so far reported. Instead and interestingly, however, it showed a certain relatedness to a Chinese isolate CCC220 (AB108537) reported from Changchun, Jilin province (Liu et al. Intervirology 2003).