TY - JOUR T1 - Absence of hepatitis E virus RNA in semen samples of infertile male in China JF - Gut JO - Gut DO - 10.1136/gutjnl-2019-319234 SP - gutjnl-2019-319234 AU - Lin Wang AU - Zhe Zhang AU - Jingyi Shu AU - Haitao Zhang AU - Yuzhuo Yang AU - Zhaochao Liang AU - Qiyu He AU - Weijin Huang AU - Youchun Wang AU - Hui Zhuang AU - Hui Jiang AU - Ling Wang Y1 - 2019/06/19 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2019/06/19/gutjnl-2019-319234.abstract N2 - Hepatitis E virus (HEV) RNA has been recently discovered in semen samples of Chinese infertile man with a remarkably high rate of 28.1% (52/185, table 1).1 All HEV isolates belong to HEV genotype 4 (HEV4), which is the dominant strain prevalent in China. This intriguing discovery has aroused our attention. In a recent response to the work done by Huang et al, researchers in Germany tested 87 semen samples collected from infertile men, but the HEV RNA positive rate is 0% (table 1).2 Germany is prevalent with HEV3, so the authors suggested that HEV genotype-specific or variant-specific pathophysiology may explain the contrary results. However, the two studies both have limitations to reach a more accurate conclusion. The size of patients included in both studies is relatively small, and … ER -