Ramathibodi Hospital ready to sequence hepatitis virus DNA following WHO alert
Ramathibodi Hospital said on Thursday it would be ready to sequence the DNA of the hepatitis virus if there is an outbreak of acute, severe hepatitis among Thai children following an alert issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The hospital’s Centre for Medical Genomics announced on its Facebook wall on Thursday that it would be ready to use NGS-Clinical Metagenomics technology to check the virus if Thai children are hit by acute, severe hepatitis of unknown origin.
The centre said the technology is much faster in detecting and identifying the virus than the laboratory culture technique. The centre added that several types of virus cannot be cultured in a lab.
The WHO issued the warning on April 15 and revised its announcement on April 23.
The WHO said that as of April 21, at least 169 cases of acute hepatitis of unknown origin have been reported from 11 countries in the WHO European Region and one country in the WHO Region of the Americas.
It said 114 cases have been reported in the United Kingdom, 13 in Spain, 12 in Israel, nine in the United States of America, six in Denmark, five in Ireland, four each in The Netherlands and Italy, two each in Norway and France, and one each in Romania and Belgium.
The clinical syndrome among identified cases is acute hepatitis (liver inflammation) with markedly elevated liver enzymes. Many cases reported gastrointestinal symptoms including abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting preceding presentation with severe acute hepatitis, and increased levels of liver enzymes (aspartate transaminase (AST) or alanine aminotransaminase (ALT) greater the 500 IU/L) and jaundice, the WHO said.
The common viruses that cause acute viral hepatitis (hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D and E) have not been detected in any of these cases. International travel or links to other countries based on the currently available information have not been identified as factors, the WHO added.
The WHO said 17 children in the UK needed liver transplant because of the virus.