PRO/AH/EDR> Hepatitis E, pet rabbit – Italy

Hepatitis E — Worldwide/Unknown
Summary:
In this work, we identified for the 1st time hepatitis E virus (HEV) in a pet house rabbit, an adult 7-year-old female domestic rabbit (_Oryctolagus cuniculus_). Importantly, the resulting phylogenetic tree showed that the HEV strain identified in the pet house rabbit was closely related to a human HEV sequence; this finding reawakens concerns regarding the zoonotic risk represented by HEV in animals and adds house rabbits to the spectrum of potential sources of infection for