Hepatitis E, generally mild in immunocompetent individuals, can become chronic in transplant recipients due to the immunosuppressive treatments necessary to prevent graft rejection. Teams from the Department of Nephrology and Organ Transplantation at CHU de Toulouse, led by Pr Nassim Kamar, and the virology laboratory led by Pr Jacques Izopet, studied data from 6,452 transplant patients over a 23-year period. Among them, 228 contracted HEV, representing 3.53%.
The results show that 65.1% of infected individuals still had a chronic infection three months after diagnosis. The study also highlighted severe complications affecting hepatic, renal, and neurological systems. A crucial finding is the significant role of ribavirin, a treatment found to be effective in 91.5% of the cases studied, underscoring the importance of early screening for transplant recipients.
“"Our work has also helped highlight complications of hepatitis E that affect not only the liver but also the kidneys and the nervous system. These results underscore the importance of our collaboration with virologists and transplantation specialists, as well as early diagnosis and appropriate monitoring to prevent these complications in transplant recipients."
This research is part of a long-standing effort by CHU de Toulouse teams to advance knowledge on HEV infection in transplant patients. Previous publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, as early as 2008, described chronic forms of the infection in immunocompromised individuals, and in 2014, demonstrated the efficacy of ribavirin in treating this chronic infection, thereby contributing to changes in therapeutic practices.
