Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a pathogen that causes hepatitis worldwide. Molecular studies have identified HEV RNA in blood products although its significance is not understood. This study was undertaken to characterize HEV genomes in asymptomatic plasma donors from Sweden and Germany lacking anti-HEV. Complete open reading frames (ORFs) were obtained from HEV strains in 5 out of 18 plasma donors who tested positive for HEV RNA. All strains had CUG as the start codon of ORF3, while 147 GenBank strains all had AUG as the start codon (p < 0.0001). This substitution was found in both interrelated and unrelated strains belonging to different phylogenetic clades. The HEV strains from the seronegative plasma donors had no other substitution in common, which may be why the CUG substitution seems to explain the seronegativity.

中文翻译：

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来自RNA阳性但血清学呈阴性的供体的戊型肝炎病毒基因型3基因组具有CUG作为ORF3的起始密码子。

戊型肝炎病毒（HEV）是导致全世界肝炎的病原体。分子研究已鉴定出血液制品中的戊型肝炎病毒RNA，尽管其意义尚不清楚。这项研究的目的是在缺乏抗HEV的瑞典和德国的无症状血浆供体中鉴定HEV基因组。从18例HEV RNA检测阳性的血浆供体中的5例中，从HEV株获得了完整的开放阅读框（ORF）。所有菌株均以CUG作为ORF3的起始密码子，而147个GenBank菌株均以AUG作为起始密码子（p <0.0001）。在属于不同系统进化分支的相关和不相关菌株中都发现了这种取代。来自血清阴性血浆供体的HEV菌株没有其他共同的替代，这可能就是为什么CUG替代似乎可以解释血清阴性的原因。