Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of acute jaundice in South Asia. Gaps in our understanding of transmission are driven by non-specific symptoms and scarcity of diagnostics, impeding rational control strategies. In this context, serological data can provide important proxy measures of infection. We enrolled a population-representative serological cohort of 2,337 individuals in Sitakunda, Bangladesh. We estimated the annual risks of HEV infection and seroreversion both using serostatus changes between paired serum samples collected 9 months apart, and by fitting catalytic models to the age-stratified cross-sectional seroprevalence. At baseline, 15% (95 CI: 14–17%) of people were seropositive, with seroprevalence highest in the relatively urban south. During the study, 27 individuals seroreverted (annual seroreversion risk: 15%, 95 CI: 10–21%), and 38 seroconverted (annual infection risk: 3%, 95CI: 2–5%). Relying on cross-sectional seroprevalence data alone, and ignoring seroreversion, underestimated the annual infection risk five-fold (0.6%, 95 CrI: 0.5–0.6%). When we accounted for the observed seroreversion in a reversible catalytic model, infection risk was more consistent with measured seroincidence. Our results quantify HEV infection risk in Sitakunda and highlight the importance of accounting for seroreversion when estimating infection incidence from cross-sectional seroprevalence data.

The aim was to estimate the incidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection in health-care workers (HCWs) in Japan. We repeated cross-sectional surveys of HCWs with QuantiFERON®-TB Gold (QFT-G) in 2003, 2005 and 2007 at a hospital with tuberculosis (TB) wards, and 311 HCWs who underwent QFT-G testing two or three times were included in the study. Five HCWs (1·8%) converted from negative to positive. Incidence of new TB infection was estimated to be 0·6/100 person-years by the CDC's definition. Thirteen positive persons (41%) reverted from positive to negative. Multivariable logistic regression analysis identified a significant association between QFT-G conversion and working in TB wards. The IFN-γ levels of all but two subjects with reverting or converting QFT-G results were close to the test's cut-off. The incidence of Mtb infection in HCWs at our hospital was higher than that estimated for the general population in Japan. Criteria for defining QFT-G conversion and reversion need further investigation considering the high proportion of reversion, as the incidence of infection would have changed if we had applied other definitions.