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Copyright © 2008 Caron and Kazanji; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. Hepatitis E virus is highly prevalent among pregnant women in Gabon, central Africa, with different patterns between rural and urban areas Mélanie Caron1,2 and Mirdad Kazanji  1,2,31Departement de Virologie, Centre International de Recherches Médicales (CIRMF), BP 769, Franceville, Gabon 2Service de Coopération et d'Action Culturelle, French Embassy, BP 2105, Libreville, Gabon 3Réseau International des Instituts Pasteur, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Dr Roux, 75015 Paris, France Corresponding author.Mélanie Caron: m.caron/at/cirmf.org; Mirdad Kazanji: m.kazanji/at/cirmf.org Received October 13, 2008; Accepted December 22, 2008. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | ||||
Abstract Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is highly endemic in several African countries with high mortality rate among pregnant women. Nothing is known about the circulation of this virus in central Africa. We evaluated therefore the prevalence of anti-HEV IgG in samples collected from pregnant women living in the five main cities of Gabon, central Africa. We found that 14.1% (119/840) of pregnant women had anti-HEV IgG. The prevalence differed between regions and between age groups. In 391 newly collected samples from the region where the highest prevalence was found, a significant difference (p < 0.05) in seroprevalence was found between rural (6.4%) and urban (13.5%) areas. These data provide evidence of a high prevalence of HEV in Gabon, providing indirect evidence of past contact with this virus. | ||||
