Retrospectively seroprevalence study on anti-HEV-IgG antibody in patients with chronic hepatitis or liver cirrhosis in a Chinese teaching hospital.

BACKGROUND AND

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the serum anti-hepatitis E virus (HEV) antibody positive rate in patients with different types of chronic hepatitis (CH) or cirrhosis.

METHODS

A total of 1751 hospitalized patients were chart reviewed, who were diagnosed with mono-CH or cirrhosis between 2011 and 2016.

RESULTS

The total anti-HEV-IgG positive rate was 1.33% (13/981) in CH patients, which was significantly lower than that (6.49%; 50/770) in cirrhosis patients (odds ratio [OR], 4.78 [2.51-9.10]; P = 0.00). The comparison of positive rate of anti-HEV-IgG between the same etiology CH and cirrhosis groups was as follows: chronic hepatitis B 1.27% (10/790) versus hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related cirrhosis 4.21% (22/522) (OR, 3.04 [1.36-6.77]; P = 0.00); chronic alcoholic hepatitis 1.41% (1/71) versus alcoholic cirrhosis 9.40% (11/117) (OR, 8.00 [1.00-64.25]; P = 0.03); chronic autoimmune hepatitis 1.69% (1/59) versus autoimmune cirrhosis 13.33% (12/90) (OR, 13.11 [1.49-115.27]; P = 0.01); the differences above were statistically significant. And chronic hepatitis C 3.23% (1/31) versus hepatitis C virus-related cirrhosis 10.81% (4/37) (OR, 4.40 [0.45-43.53]; P > 0.05); chronic NASH 0.00% (0/30) versus NASH-related cirrhosis 25.00% (1/4) (P > 0.05), the differences were not statistically significant. Anti-HEV-IgG positive rates were also compared among different types of CH groups and no significant difference was found. Likewise, anti-HEV-IgG positive rate was compared among different types of cirrhosis groups, showing that the positive rates of both alcoholic cirrhosis (9.40%) and autoimmune cirrhosis (13.33%) were significantly higher than that of HBV-related cirrhosis (4.21%) (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

We observed that the cirrhosis patients had a significantly higher anti-HEV-IgG positive rate comparing with the CH patients, especially in those with HBV-related, alcohol-related, and autoimmune-related cirrhosis (after adjusted for age). Additionally, it seems that the conditions of alcoholic cirrhosis and autoimmune cirrhosis are more susceptible to HEV infection due to the significantly higher positive anti-HEV-IgG rate in these patients.