Genetic variability of hepatitis E virus within and between three epidemics in India

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is an important cause of epidemic and sporadic acute viral hepatitis in many developing countries, including India. We evaluated the genetic variability within two regions (a 476-nt long ORF1 segment and a 304-nt long ORF2 segment) from specimens collected during three outbre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Virus research 1999, Vol.59 (1), p.35-48
Main Authors: Aggarwal, Rakesh, McCaustland, Karen A., Dilawari, Jang B., Sinha, Saswati D., Robertson, Betty H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Base Sequence
Disease Outbreaks
Genetic Variation
Hepatitis E - epidemiology
Hepatitis E - virology
Hepatitis E virus
Hepatitis E virus - classification
Hepatitis E virus - genetics
Humans
India
India - epidemiology
Molecular Sequence Data
Open Reading Frames
Phylogeny
Polymerase chain reaction
Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
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Summary:Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is an important cause of epidemic and sporadic acute viral hepatitis in many developing countries, including India. We evaluated the genetic variability within two regions (a 476-nt long ORF1 segment and a 304-nt long ORF2 segment) from specimens collected during three outbreaks in the cities of Karnal (1987), Yamunanagar (1989), and Meerut (1996), India, and from one patient, residing in Lucknow, India, who had a case of sporadic hepatitis (1996). Within an outbreak, sequences in the ORF1 and ORF2 regions were 99.3–100.0% identical. However, when strains were compared between outbreaks, identity in the ORF1 and ORF2 region was 97.1–99.2 and 96.4–100.0%, respectively. A comparison of these sequences to previously published Indian ORF1 and ORF2 sequences revealed even lower similarities, 95.2–98.5 and 95.1–98.7%, respectively. One patient in the Meerut outbreak had genomic sequences that differed substantially from the other patients affected during this outbreak and probably reflected a sporadic infection. The sporadic hepatitis E strain from Lucknow clustered with a previously described HEV strain from a patient with fulminant hepatic failure (FHF). Our data suggest that the ORF1 and ORF2 segments can be used to study the molecular epidemiology of HEV infection and indicate that much remains to be determined about the genetic variability of Indian HEV strains.
ISSN:0168-1702
1872-7492
DOI:10.1016/S0168-1702(98)00123-3