Why does Hepatitis E become chronic in some patients, and why do medications not work? To find out, an international research team led by scientists from Bochum observed a patient with chronic Hepatitis E infection over a year.
Repeated sequencing of the virus RNA showed that the virus incorporated various parts of the host's messenger RNA into its genome. This resulted in a replication advantage, which may have contributed to the infection becoming chronic.
How can the virus evade the immune system? Why does the infection become chronic and not heal? The researchers wanted to find out and analyzed for the first time all virus populations of a chronically infected patient over a period of more than a year. They examined more than 180 individual sequences from blood samples in detail.
"Possibly, during Hepatitis E infection, a race between the virus and the immune system occurs in the body," speculates Daniel Todt. If the virus manages to incorporate host RNA before the immune system successfully combats the infection, it may lead to a chronic course."Host RNA in the viral genome could, in any case, serve as a biomarker in the acute phase of an infection, indicating early on that it is likely to become chronic.
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