Hepatitis B and E co-primary infections in an HIV-1-infected patient

Abstract

We report an autochthonous hepatitis E virus (HEV)-hepatitis B virus co-primary infection in a 41-year-old man having sex with men and infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This case prompts testing for HEV in HIV-infected patients with acute hepatitis even if primary infection with another hepatitis virus is diagnosed.

Fig 1

Phylogenetic tree based on a 943-nucleotide (nt) fragment of the hepatitis B virus genome encoding the reverse transcriptase/hepatitis B surface antigen (nt 131 to 1073 in reference to GenBank sequence accession no. AF405706). HBV DNA from the present case is indicated by a boldface white font on a black background. Other sequence names in boldface indicate sequences with the highest BLAST scores (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) when searching in the NCBI GenBank nucleotide sequence database (BBHGbk; black frame) or our laboratory nucleotide sequence database (BBHTim; gray background); reference sequences with known genotypes and subtypes are indicated (3). Nucleotide sequence alignments were performed by using ClustalX version 2.0 (www.clustal.org/download/current). The tree was constructed by using MEGA5 (www.megasoftware.net) and the neighbor-joining method. Branches were obtained from 1,000 resamplings of the data; those with bootstrap values of >50% are labeled on the tree. The avian HEV sequence AY043166 was used as an out-group. The scale bar indicates the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. HEV sequences are labeled with GenBank accession number or laboratory number (for BBHTim and the present case), host, country where isolated, and collection or submission date. Av, avian; Hu, human; BBH, best BLAST hit; FRA, France; Gbk, GenBank; Mrs, Marseille; Tim, Timone laboratory.

Fig 2

Phylogenetic tree based on partial (281-nucleotide [nt]) sequences of open reading frame 2 of the hepatitis E virus (HEV) genome (nt 6034 to 6314 in reference to GenBank sequence accession no. AB291961). HEV RNA from the present case is indicated by a boldface white font on a black background. Other sequence names in boldface indicate sequences with the highest BLAST scores (http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) when searching in the NCBI GenBank nucleotide sequence database (BBHGbk; black frame) or our laboratory nucleotide sequence database (BBHTim; gray background); reference sequences with known genotypes and subtypes are indicated (4). Nucleotide sequence alignments were performed by using ClustalX version 2.0 (www.clustal.org/download/current). The tree was constructed by using MEGA5 (www.megasoftware.net) and the neighbor-joining method. Branches were obtained from 1,000 resamplings of the data; those with bootstrap values of >50% are labeled on the tree. The avian HEV sequence AY043166 was used as an out-group. The scale bar indicates the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. HEV sequences are labeled with GenBank accession number or laboratory number (for BBHTim and the present case), host, country where isolated, and collection or submission date. Av, avian; BEL, Belgium; Hu, human; BBH, best BLAST hit; COL, Colombia; FRA, France; Gbk, GenBank; GER, Germany; ITA, Italy; Mrs, Marseille; Tim, Timone laboratory; USA, United States of America.