Why the study?
Do molecular diagnostic methods improve the diagnosis and epidemiological tracking of Hepatitis A Virus infection compared to current serologic tests?
Do molecular diagnostic methods improve the diagnosis and epidemiological tracking of Hepatitis A Virus infection compared to current serologic tests?
Molecular diagnostic methods enhance the understanding of HAV epidemiology and enable rapid detection of food-borne transmission sources.
May aid foodborne HAV outbreak tracing; leaves open prospective validation versus serology for routine use.
Current serologic tests provide the foundation for diagnosis of hepatitis A and hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection. Recent advances in methods to identify and characterize nucleic acid markers of viral infections have provided the foundation for the field of molecular epidemiology and increased our knowledge of the molecular biology and epidemiology of HAV. Although HAV is primarily shed in feces, there is a strong viremic phase during infection which has allowed easy access to virus isolates and the use of molecular markers to determine their genetic relatedness. Molecular epidemiologic studies have provided new information on the types and extent of HAV infection and transmission in the United States. In addition, these new diagnostic methods have provided tools for the rapid detection of food-borne HAV transmission and identification of the potential source of the food contamination.
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Nainan et al. (2006) studied this question.
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