HEV vaccine in China

摘要：Hepatitis E caused by hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of the most common, enterically transmitted forms of viral hepatitis. At least 20 million cases of HEV are reported every year. HEV causes usually an acute, self-limited infection but frequently results in fatal disease in pregnant women and chronic infection in immunocompromised patients. Current treatment consisting of pegylated interferon and ribavirin is non-specific and has considerable side effects. A vaccine based primarily on inducing neutralizing antibodies has been developed but it is currently only licensed in China. The vaccine used a truncated ORF2 amino acid (aa) sequence of genotype (gt) 1 to neutralized gt 4, the most prevalent gt in China. In this study we analyzed the impact and accessibility of the HEV vaccine in China. By performing a sequence analysis of the viral capsid sequences from different HEV gt with the ORF2 sequences from the vaccine strain we attempted to make inferences about the efficacy of the vaccine against different HEV gt which have been reported to infect humans.