Systematic review and meta-analysis of human bocavirus as food safety risk in shellfish

Human bocavirus (HBoV) is an emerging pathogen causing gastroenteritis/respiratory tract infection. Shellfish has been implicated in foodborne HBoV dissemination. The present investigation aimed at synthesising shellfish-associated HBoV data. Shellfish-HBoV data were mined from public repositories using topic-specific algorithm. A total of 30 data sources was identified of which 5 were synthesised. The average HBoV positivity and sample-size was 12 ± 9.2 and 134.2 ± 113.6, respectively. HBoV was studied in mollusc with 3.7-83.3% crude prevalence. The pooled HBoV prevalence in shellfish was 9.2% (7.2-11.8; 5 studies) and 12.9% (1.8-53.9; 5 studies) in common-effects and random-effects model respectively, with 0.12-94.89% prediction interval (PI). Sensitivity analysis yielded 8.7% (6.7-11.2; PI = 1.99-29.48%) prevalence. HBoV1 and HBoV2 pooled prevalence in shellfish was 7.91% (1.61-31.09; 3 studies) and 12.52% (0.01-99.60; 3 studies), respectively. HBoV3 prevalence was reported in one single study as 6.96% (4.41-10.35). In conclusion, the present study revealed high HBoV prevalence in shellfish, signifying the need to characterise HBoV and subtypes circulating in non-mollusc shellfish. Furthermore, there is an urgent need to mitigate the food safety risk that may result from HBoV contaminated shellfish since shellfish-borne HBoV is not routinely assessed and might be underestimated at present.