June 8, 2006

China's researchers discover pig farms pose hepatitis threat

Researchers in China have discovered that people who work with pigs are twice as likely to contract hepatitis E virus than those who do not and even people who live downstream from swine farms are not spared from the infection.

The research result from Fudan University's Public Health College showed that the risk of infection increases by 84 percent for people who work on pig farms for between five to 14 years.

Fudan's Dr Zheng Yingjie and Jiang Qingwu found that nearly one in ten pigs carry the hepatitis E virus.

People with long-term close contact with pigs have a 182-percent increased risk of infection compared with others.

People who live downstream of swine farms have a nearly 30 percent increased risk of infection compared to those living upstream, the researchers reported in the June issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, an American public health journal.

The virus is transmitted by contact with pigs or pig waste, including water that pigs have come into contact with.