A case of acute hepatitis E developed in a housewife who had cooked and eaten wild boar meat a month before

Abstract

Here we report a 54 year-old woman who was admitted to our hospital due to jaundice and liver dysfunction. Virological markers for hepatitis A, B, and C viruses were negative, but later, it was revealed that she was positive for IgM and IgG antibodies against hepatitis E virus (HEV) as well as for HEV RNA of genotype 3. She did not have a history of traveling abroad in the past 30 years, but had a history of handling, cooking and eating wild boar meat one month before the onset of her disease. Since her husband, who had eaten the boar meat together, did not develop hepatitis E, and since the boar meat was served well-cooked, we suspected that the patient might have got infected with HEV by handling with raw boar meat in the kitchen, not by eating the well-done meat. HEV RNA of genotype 3 was recovered also from a piece of the boar meat that was left-over and kept frozen. © 2006 The Japan Society of Hepatology.