Copyright
©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 7, 2020; 26(37): 5543-5560
Published online Oct 7, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i37.5543
Published online Oct 7, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i37.5543
Hepatitis E virus: Epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical manifestations, and treatment
Abdullah Tarık Aslan, Department of Internal Medicine, Gölhisar State Hospital, Burdur 15100, Turkey
Hatice Yasemin Balaban, Department of Gastroenterology, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara 06100, Turkey
Author contributions: Aslan AT wrote the paper and collected data; Balaban HY carried out data collection; Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflicts of interest to be stated.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hatice Yasemin Balaban, MD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Hacettepe University Sihhiye Campus, Ankara 06100, Turkey. yhbalaban@gmail.com
Received: June 28, 2020
Peer-review started: June 28, 2020
First decision: July 28, 2020
Revised: August 11, 2020
Accepted: September 10, 2020
Article in press: September 10, 2020
Published online: October 7, 2020
Processing time: 91 Days and 20.6 Hours
Peer-review started: June 28, 2020
First decision: July 28, 2020
Revised: August 11, 2020
Accepted: September 10, 2020
Article in press: September 10, 2020
Published online: October 7, 2020
Processing time: 91 Days and 20.6 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The hepatitis E virus (HEV) is the most common cause of acute viral hepatitis worldwide. To date, four main genotypes of the HEV infecting humans have been described. While HEV1 and HEV2 cause only acute hepatitis, HEV3 or HEV4 can become chronic in immunocompromised patients. Extrahepatic manifestations have also been defined for these genotypes. Acute infections are generally self-limiting and do not require special treatment. For chronic hepatitis, ribavirin is the drug of choice. Nevertheless, novel drugs are required for patients in whom ribavirin treatment fails. We herein reviewed the epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical manifestations, and treatment of HEV infections.