A Hong Kong man was diagnosed with the rat version of Hepatitis E, making it the world’s first case of the rat version of the disease in humans. Does it have anything to do with his liver transplant, or was it a result of living in rather unhygienic conditions?
World’s First Rat Hepatitis E Case In Humans
In May 2017, a 56-year-old man from Hong Kong received a liver transplant at the University of Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital. However, he developed liver problems just months after the organ transplant, and by September 2017, testing revealed that he had the rat version of Hepatitis E Virus (HEV), the first recorded case in the world.
Despite having had the liver transplant just months prior to the onset of his illness, his doctors do not think that it was the cause of the disease nor that he got it from another human. In fact, testing on the liver donor as well as all the people who donated their blood to him turned out negative for rat HEV. So how did he get it?
Rat Disease Jumping To Humans
Doctors are still unsure as to how the rat disease jumped to the man, but it’s possible that he may have gotten it from consuming food that was contaminated with rat feces. As it happens, the man apparently lives in unhygienic conditions, as he lives rather close to a garbage chute where investigators found rat droppings and described the location as a favorable condition for rat breeding.
However, testing of the rats as well as the nearby water turned out negative for the disease and only turned out positive in frozen samples of a rat that used to roam the area on 2012. Still, the exact source of his illness is currently not known.
It is possible that it was because of the man’s liver transplant that he was more susceptible to contracting the disease, as he had to take medications to suppress his immune system so that his body wouldn’t reject the transplanted organ. That and his living conditions combined made his body more easily available for the rat disease to jump to him.
He is now considered “completely normal” after receiving antiviral medications for chronic HEV.
'Wake-Up Call' For Hygiene
As a result, the top microbiologist at Hong Kong University (HKU), Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung, described the discovery of the man’s illness as a wake-up call for better environmental hygiene in Hong Kong, also pointing out the need to prevent rats from breeding.
“We don’t know if in future there will be a serious outbreak of the rat Hepatitis E virus in Hong Kong. We need to closely monitor this issue,” Kwok-Yung said at a press conference. He also notes how Hong Kong’s hygiene has recently slip despite the cleanliness that followed the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak.
According to Dr. Siddharth Sridhar of HKU's department of microbiology, who was involved in studying the patient, there is no imminent threat of a major hepatitis outbreak or epidemic but that public health authorities and researchers are on alert.
