Abstract
Background: The epidemiological shift of hepatitis A has contributed to a sustained community-wide outbreak in Korea during 2008. Objectives: To assess the risk factors associated with hepatitis A virus (HAV) propagation, and to analyze the circulating genotype in the sustained community-wide outbreak. Study design: The hospital-based case-control study was conducted in an 850-bed university hospital in Seoul from April to August, 2008. For molecular analysis of HAV isolates, a 488-bp gene fragment of the VP1 region was amplified and sequenced. Results: In the multivariated logistic regression model, the risk factors of HAV infection adjusted by age were contacts with hepatitis A case (OR 3.98, 95% CI: 1.36-11.66), residence with child aged ≤5 years (OR 3.43, 95% CI: 1.32-8.87), consuming uncooked lettuce (OR 3.98, 95% CI: 1.83-8.68) or carrot (OR 2.38, 95% CI: 2.38-5.09), drinking tap water (OR 3.68, 95% CI: 1.62-8.37) or portable spring water (OR 2.71, 95% CI: 1.11-6.62) supplied by water purifiers, and eating out (OR 3.87, 95% CI: 1.53-9.78). All isolates analyzed belonged to genotype IIIA. There were 42 nucleotide differences in the sequenced VP1 region among the isolates. Amino acid sequences were identical with each other. Conclusions: Our study suggests that sporadically contaminated food- or water-borne sources as well as person-to-person transmission might lead a sustained community-wide HAV outbreak and pre-existing dominant genotype IA might be replaced with genotype IIIA as a major epidemic strain in Korea. Our findings urge the health authority to make public guidelines for HAV vaccination and outbreak control. Crown
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 184-188 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Journal of Clinical Virology |
Volume | 46 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2009 Oct |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was financially supported in part by Seoul grant no. 10920 and by KICOS project (Battelle Institute-Korea University) grant.
Keywords
- Case-control studies
- Disease outbreaks
- Epidemiology
- Hepatitis A
- Risk factors
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Virology
- Infectious Diseases