Hepatitis E virus seroprevalence in pregnant women in Jiangsu, China, and postpartum evolution during six years

作者：Gu, Guangyu; Huang, Hongyu; Zhang, Le; Bi, Yongchun; Hu, Yali; Zhou, Yi-Hua^*

来源：BMC Infectious Diseases, 2015, 15(1): 560.

DOI：10.1186/s12879-015-1308-y

• Hepatitis E virus
• Seroprevalence
• Pregnant women
• Postpartum evolution
• Children

Background: China is an endemic area for hepatitis E virus (HEV). The previous surveys of anti-HEV seroprevalence are cross-sectional. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of infection among pregnant women and their children in Jiangsu, China, and to observe postpartum anti-HEV evolution. @@@ Methods: Sera from 497 women collected during pregnancy and 6-year postpartum and from their 497 children were screened for anti-HEV by ELISA and confirmed by Western blotting. HEV RNA was detected by reverse transcription-nested PCR. @@@ Results: Of the pregnant women, 3 (0.6 %) were anti-HEV IgM positive and 55 (11.1 %) were IgG positive. At 6-year postpartum, 18 anti-HEV IgG positive samples became negative and 18 others became IgG positive; the accumulated prevalence in this cohort of women was at least 14.7 % (73/497). Of the 497 children, the positive rates of anti-HEV IgM and IgG were 0.2 % and 0.4 %, respectively. None of the 18 children from mothers with anti-HEV IgG seroconversion was anti-HEV IgG positive. @@@ Conclusions: Our data indicate that the constant seroprevalence of anti-HEV IgG in adults may be resulted from the balance of negative seroconversion due to waning immunity and positive seroconversion due to novel infections, and the risk of intra-family transmission of HEV was low. The data also imply that cross-sectional seroepidemiological survey may underestimate the prevalence of HEV infection, due to the natural decay of pathogen-specific IgG.

• 出版日期2015-12-9
• 单位南京大学