Type E hepatitis: State of the Art

Hepatitis E (HE) occurs predominantly in tropical and semitropical countries in the form of sporadic cases or epidemics of variable magnitude. In industrialized countries, only imported sporadic cases of HE have been reported, with little evidence of human-to-human transmission. HE resembles hepatitis A clinically and epidemiologically but affects young adults rather than children, showing a higher mortality rate in pregnant women. HE virus (HEV) shares many characteristics of the caliciviruses, although it is genomically distinct from this family of viruses.