TY - JOUR T1 - No link between male infertility and HEV genotype 3 infection JF - Gut JO - Gut SP - 1150 LP - 1151 DO - 10.1136/gutjnl-2019-319027 VL - 69 IS - 6 AU - Thomas Horvatits AU - Domenica Varwig-Janssen AU - Julian Schulze zur Wiesch AU - Rabea Lübke AU - Svenja Reucher AU - Sebastian Frerk AU - Marylyn M Addo AU - Stefan W Schneider AU - Ansgar W Lohse AU - Marc Luetgehetmann AU - Sven Pischke Y1 - 2020/06/01 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/69/6/1150.abstract N2 - With great interest we read the article ‘High prevalence of hepatitis E virus in semen of infertile male and causes testis damage’ recently published by Huang et al in GUT.1 The authors report a strikingly high rate of 28% of hepatitis E virus (HEV) RNA PCR positivity (all of them genotype 4 hour) in semen from infertile men from the Chinese Kunming region (n=185) and they could demonstrate HEV antigens in the testes and HEV-RNA in semen of acutely infected macaques.1 This finding is without precedence and has never been reported. Pathophysiologically, the high rate of HEV detection in semen of infertile men could only be explained by HEV persistence beyond the blood-testis barrier.Duration of PCR positivity in semen has not been assessed by the authors neither in the infertile man nor in the macaques. Thus, it remains unclear … ER -