Similarities, differences, and possible interactions between hepatitis E and hepatitis C viruses: Relevance for research and clinical practice

Table 1 Similarities, differences and potential interactions across the major points of hepatitis E virus and hepatitis C virus infections

Categories	Similarity	Difference	Interaction
Epidemiology	High prevalence in developing countries[1]	HEV infects humans and animals[6,7]	Co-infections or superinfections[2,3]
Genetic variability	RNA viruses (quasispecies), genotype classification, recombination events[4,5]	Replication rate, HEV has non-enveloped or quasi-enveloped virions[12,26]	None
Pathogenesis	Disease progression in immunocompromised patients[32,54]	Microbiota alteration, hepatic severity[23,33,83,84]	HEV could influence hepatic or extrahepatic symptoms in patients with chronic HCV infection[2,3]
Treatment	Choice of therapy[35,50]	PEG-IFN-α and RBV are still the therapies of choice for HEV[35]	DAA therapy can be effective against both viruses[50,53]
Prevention	Public health measures[58]	Vaccine availability[60,62]	Improvement of screening policies[35,50]

DAA: Directly acting antivirals; PEG-IFN: Pegylated interferon; RBV: Ribavirin; HEV: Hepatitis E virus; HCV: Hepatitis C virus.