Childhood hepatitis outbreak under scrutiny

[...]this result has puzzled clinicians because, although adenovirus-induced hepatitis is a known phenomenon, it is rare and usually restricted to people with severely compromised immune systems. [...]the studies identified various HAdV strains, even in children from the same geographical region, implying that a single strain could not explain these hepatitis outbreaks. In the second study, also from the United Kingdom, Morfopoulou et at.3 report high levels of AAV2 in 27 of 28 affected children, and only low levels of AAV2 in a control group, which included immunocompromised children who had acute hepatitis due to other causes, and children with normal immune systems who had fever. The authors used several techniques to demonstrate that the disease was not due to direct damage to hepatocytes (known as hepatotoxicity) caused by AAV2 alone. Because low levels of HAdV and human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) were detected in the liver in most cases, the authors speculate that these viruses might enable AAV2 replication, leading to damage to hepatocytes.