Zoonotic hepatitis E virus strains in German blood donors

Abstract

Dear Editor,We have read the letters of Baylis et al. [1] and Ijaz et al.[2] on hepatitis E virus (HEV) in blood products with greatinterest. We wish to add data from a similar study onplasma samples from German blood donors collected dur-ing 2009–2010. Viral RNA from pools consisting of up to96 plasma samples was purified as described previously [3]and mixed in metapools of 20, corresponding to 93 955individual donations. A highly sensitive hemi-nestedRT-PCR assay targeting conserved sites of the HEVRNA-dependent RNA polymerase was used for virus detec-tion [4]. In total, 14 of 1185 (1AE18%) individual plasmapools were positive. Unfortunately, the scarcity of availablespecimens did not permit testing of individual donations.Still, extrapolation of HEV-positive pools to individualsamples corresponded to a minimum prevalence of 0AE015%in healthy blood donors. This was compatible withdetection rates in blood products of 0AE012% in Sweden and0AE022% in Germany [1].Positive pools were quantified using a commerciallyavailable real-time RT-PCR assay (RealStar HEV RT-PCRkit; Altona Diagnostics, Hamburg, Germany). Comparable