| dc.description.abstract | Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a non-enveloped single stranded RNA virus that cause acute viral
infection in most Asian and African nations. HEV mostly transmits through fecal-oral pathway,
occurred in both human and animal feces; furthermore, the presence of this virus also
contained in contaminated water that potentially affect another surrounding stream by sewage
elimination from piggery. Shellfish, especially crustacean works as vectors to carry the viral
transmission to human through contaminated water supplement. With the herpesvirus such as
HEV, the transmission usually occurs in the hatchery-larvae and juvenile stages of some
bivalve shellfish. In some local piggery, the farming areas meet some hygienic obstacles that
potentially serve as vector for viral transmission. By applying Nested PCR, 120 shellfish
samples were collected in various local markets for detecting ORF1’s genes of HEV and they
included: 20 tiger prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii), 50 giant river prawns (Penaeus
monodon), and 50 mussels (Mytilus edulis). Nested PCR provided the specificity and
efficiency in amplifying the target sequence whose low abundance; due to the higher
sensitivity than conventional PCR, Nested PCR usually used to detect various viral and
bacterial pathogens that low abundance. After screening total 120 samples, all the samples
showed negative results in gel electrophoresis when comparing with the positive control. In
the other hand, the result might not prove strongly that there was no HEV presence in all
samples, the obstacles could come from the applied conditions might not be optimal enough
for shellfish samples or sample size need to be expanded as well as the source of sample
selection. | en_US |
