Laura Chacón Carrascosa defended this Degree Final Project

July 20^th, 2020

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that belongs to the Hepeviridae family. It is the leading cause of viral hepatitis in the world, affecting 20 million people each year according to the WHO. Today up to 8 genotypes are distinguished, which is found according to their epidemiology, host, geographic distribution, pathogenesis, etc. In developing regions, genotypes 1 and 2, exclusive to humans, are the most common, being transmitted through the faecal-oral route through contaminated water. On the other hand, in developed regions the main genotypes are zoonotics, 3 and 4, which are transmitted through the consumption of raw or undercooked food of animal origin, generally from pigs, wild boars and deer. In recent years, new genotypes associated with new animal hosts have been described and that may be responsible for the transmission of HEV to humans, such as genotypes 7 and 8 described in camelids. There is evidence of high prevalences in these animals and of their transmission to humans through the consumption of camel meat and milk. However, studies in this regard are very limited and restricted, mainly in Asia and Africa. Therefore, the objective of this work was to determine the seroprevalence of HEV in the serum of two alpaca herds in different geographic regions: 235 from Toledo, Spain and 207 from Salisbury, England, using two commercial ELISA kits. There were no significant identified differences between the two herds, but they did depend on the kit used, obtaining percentages of 16.1% in 62 samples of Toledo alpacas using the ID Screen®HEV kit Indirect Multi Species Indirect ELISA (IDVet), and 2.6% in the alpacas of two herds (383 samples), 1.9% in 207 samples from Salisbury and 3.4% in 176 samples from Toledo, using the HEV-Ab EIA kit (Axiom). This is likely due to differences in sensitivity and specificity. These percentages are lower than in other studies on camelids in African and Asian countries, which may be due to differences in geographical areas, methodology used, animal species, genotype, etc. In conclusion, the presence of HEV in Europe in this species has been demonstrated, but to complete these studies, molecular and genotyped detection can be carried out to assess its possible zoonotic potential