WASHINGTON (AFP) – British researchers reported a breakthrough on Monday in mysterious hepatitis cases affecting young children, finding the serious liver condition was linked to co-infection of two common viruses.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported at least 1,010 probable cases, including 46 that required transplants and 22 deaths from the illness dating back to last October.
Previous theories had centred on a spike in commonly found adenovirus infections being behind the cases.
But in two new studies carried out independently and simultaneously in Scotland and London, scientists found another virus, AAV2 played a significant role and was present in 96 per cent of all patients examined.
AAV2 is not normally known to cause disease and cannot replicate itself without another “helper” virus being present.
Both teams concluded that co-infection with either AAV2 and an adenovirus, or sometimes the herpes virus HHV6, offered the best explanation for the severe liver disease.
“The presence of the AAV2 virus is associated with unexplained hepatitis in children,” said infectious disease professor Emma Thomson of the University of Glasgow, who led the Scottish paper, in a statement.
But she also cautioned it was not yet certain whether AAV2 was causing the disease or was rather a biomarker for underlying adenovirus infection that is harder to detect but was the main pathogen.
Both papers have been posted online to “pre-print” servers and still await peer review before they are published in journals.
The two studies looked both at patients who acquired hepatitis and those that did not, finding that AAV2 was mostly present in those who got the illness, not those that didn’t.
