%0 Journal Article %T Knowledge Is Safety: The Time Is Ripe for Hepatitis E Virus Blood Donor Screening %A Cornelius Knabbe %A Jens Dreier %A Tanja Vollmer %J Archive of "Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy". %D 2016 %R 10.1159/000450794 %X Recently, Hewitt et al. [1] demonstrated transmission of hepatitis E viruses (HEV) via contaminated blood in 42% of transfusion recipients. The authors reported a prevalence rate of 1:2,848 HEV RNA-positive donors in England, a figure comparable to other European countries (Germany 1:1,240 [2], The Netherlands 1:1,761 [3]). In industrial countries, chronic, severe, or fatal HEV infections have been observed in immunosuppressed individuals (e.g. transplant patients, hematological patients [4]) and in individuals with pre-existing liver diseases [5,6] %U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5159714/