Advances in understanding of hepatitis a virus as a food- and waterborne pathogen and progress with vaccine development.

Abstract: Despite efficient vaccine and improved hygiene, hepatitis A remains the most common viral hepatitis worldwide. Its genome has evolved to render an extremely quiescent replication phenotype, through slow translation of the genomic region encoding the capsid protein to ensure an accurate capsid folding. This capsid is resistant to many biological and environmental constraints during virus transmission, as it is very stable and has a very low antigenic variability. However, the inherent genetic variability of an RNA virus in association with vaccination campaigns may promote the emergence of new variants.