Rats in Hong Kong are infecting humans with Hepatitis E, and nobody knows exactly how.
It was in 2018 when the first case of the infectious disease was reported. A 56-year-old man who underwent a liver transplant showed abnormal liver functions, according to CNN.
Further tests found that the man’s immune system was responding to hepatitis E, a liver disease, but doctors could not find the human strain of HEV or hepatitis E virus in his blood.
Hepatitis E can also cause jaundice, an enlarged liver, and fever. The virus comes in four species, and at that time, only 1 of these four was known to spread to humans.
But for the first time in history, researchers found rat hepatitis E in a human.
Dr. Siddhart Sridhar, one of the Hong Kong University researchers, said: “Suddenly, we have a virus that can jump from street rats to humans.”
The case was so rare that the researchers wondered if it was just a “one-off incident, one patient who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
However, it happened again.
Since the 2018 study, 10 more people in Hong Kong have tested positive with rat HEV. On April 30 this year, a 61-year-old man with abnormal liver function was diagnosed with rat hepatitis E.
Researchers fear there might be hundreds more infected residents out there.
According to the World Health Organization, the human strain of hepatitis E usually spreads through fecal contamination of drinking water. But when it comes to the rat strain, nobody knows yet how the rodents are infecting humans. Researchers have yet to identify the exact way of transmission but their theories include patients handling contaminated objects or drinking contaminated water.
“Based on the available epidemiological information, the source and the route of infection could not be determined,” Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection said in a statement on April 30.
“What we know is the rats in Hong Kong carry the virus, and we test the humans and find the virus. But how exactly it jumps between them — whether the rats contaminate our food, or there’s another animal involved, we don’t know,” Dr. Sridhar said. “That’s the missing link.”
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