A New Viral Agent, SEN Virus (SENV), Has Been Detected in Patients from Several Countries: The Pathogenic Role of SENV in Coinfections with Hepatitis B Virus or Hepatitis C Virus Should Be Investigated
To the Editor—We read with interest the study of Shibata et al. [1] regarding the prevalence of a newly identified virus, SEN virus (SENV), among patientswith liver disease and blood donors in Japan. We agree that SENV subtypes H and D have a global distribution since, in addition to the detection of the virus in Italy [2], the United States [3], Canada [4], and Japan [1], we detected SENV in patients from France and Brazil. In our study, the prevalence of SENV was higher among patients with chronic hepatitis of unknown etiology (9 [11%] of 80 patients); the prevalence was similar for samples from both France and Brazil. None of the 30 blood donors tested, however, appeared to be positive for SENV. Moreover, we analyzed sequential serum samples from 15 patients with acute hepatitis of unknown etiology, and none of the patients tested positive for SENV-H or SENV-D. Whether SENV is, in fact, a cause of liver disease remains an unanswered question.