True about hepatitis E are all except: September 2005, 2010

Ans. B: Majority of patients develops chronic infection HEV is transmitted the faecal-oral route. It is caused by non-enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA genomic, HAV like virus. Hepatitis E is a waterborne disease, and contaminated water or food supplies have been implicated in major outbreaks. In general, hepatitis E is a self-limiting viral infection followed by recovery. Prolonged viraemia or faecal shedding are unusual and chronic infection does not occur. Occasionally, a fulminant form of hepatitis develops, with overall patient population moality rates ranging between 0.5 - 4.0%. Fulminant hepatitis occurs more frequently in pregnancy and regularly induces a moality rate of 20% among pregnant women in the 3rd trimester. Since cases of hepatitis E are not clinically distinguishable from other types of acute viral hepatitis, diagnosis is made by blood tests which detect elevated antibody levels of specific antibodies to hepatitis E in the body or by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (-PCR). Unfounately, such tests are not widely available.