From June 1957 through January 1958, an etiology-unknown hepatitis was epidemic in a mineworkers' town Osarizawa, Akita-Prefecture, Japan, mainly affecting children. Twenty-two years later, a set of freeze-stored sera from patients involved in the "
Osarizawa Hepatitis 1957" tested positive for antibodies to hepatitis A virus (HAV) by a radioimmunoassay that was brand-new at the time. Further 31 years thereafter, our present study revealed that 8 out of 16 freeze-stored sera from the outbreak were positive for HAV RNA, and the nucleotide sequences from these samples segregated to a single cluster within genotype IA. Although the 5' terminus is yet to be determined, a nearly complete 7459-nt genome of HAV was obtained from one of these vintage samples (isolate name HA286-Aki1957, accession AB623053). To our knowledge, HA286-Aki1957 represents the oldest HAV isolates that have ever been sequenced/published to date.
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