Top 10 Highlights From ACG 2013
The second plenary session that was very interesting was on hepatitis E. We don't hear much about hepatitis E although it's defined by previous studies as a fairly prevalent disease. Studies that have used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database have defined a prevalence of hepatitis E of approximately 22%. These data are from the 1990s, and looking at the current data from another 8814 patients was the intent of a study from the Mayo Rochester Group. The study population was primarily from the United States; 10% were born outside of the United States, and all were 6 years of age or older. They found a seroprevalence in this population of 5.6% -- quite a difference from the 21.9% that had been previously reported. In a multivariate analysis, the only predictor of hepatitis E seropositivity was age, and this was highly statistically significant (P < .0001). This finding suggests that seroprevalence is related to age, not to an increasing incidence of exposure. The longer people live, the more likely they are to be exposed to hepatitis E. This study resets the data on hepatitis E. Very rarely is hepatitis E infection chronic, and very rarely is it fulminant. It is a disease that we occasionally see in patients with unexplained elevation of liver enzymes.
Less Worrisome Prevalence Data on Hepatitis E
The second plenary session that was very interesting was on hepatitis E. We don't hear much about hepatitis E although it's defined by previous studies as a fairly prevalent disease. Studies that have used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database have defined a prevalence of hepatitis E of approximately 22%. These data are from the 1990s, and looking at the current data from another 8814 patients was the intent of a study from the Mayo Rochester Group. The study population was primarily from the United States; 10% were born outside of the United States, and all were 6 years of age or older. They found a seroprevalence in this population of 5.6% -- quite a difference from the 21.9% that had been previously reported. In a multivariate analysis, the only predictor of hepatitis E seropositivity was age, and this was highly statistically significant (P < .0001). This finding suggests that seroprevalence is related to age, not to an increasing incidence of exposure. The longer people live, the more likely they are to be exposed to hepatitis E. This study resets the data on hepatitis E. Very rarely is hepatitis E infection chronic, and very rarely is it fulminant. It is a disease that we occasionally see in patients with unexplained elevation of liver enzymes.
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