Could undercooked pork kill you?

Gary Rhodes' pork tenderloin with cabbage recipe suggests the pork be cooked until it's 'still pink and moist in the middle'

Gary Rhodes' pork tenderloin with cabbage recipe suggests the pork be cooked until it's 'still pink and moist in the middle'

You can catch hepatitis E by eating undercooked pork

When David Thorne walked into the doctor’s surgery to have his eyes examined, the doctor asked if he’d just been on holiday.

‘He thought I looked tanned,’ says David, 74. ‘It seemed quite a bizarre question as it was the middle of February and I hadn’t been anywhere hot.’

Then during his examination, the doctor also noted that David’s eyes had a yellow tinge.

‘My wife Pat and I hadn’t noticed anything, but when he pointed it out we could see it,’ says David.

He was immediately referred to a jaundice clinic near his home in Treliske, Cornwall, where tests confirmed that the problem was hepatitis E.

This is one of a family of viral diseases. Hepatitis B and C are better known and affect many hundreds of thousands of people in Britain. But although few will have heard of it, hepatitis E is on the rise, and experts are concerned that it is often going undiagnosed.

Each type of hepatitis has a different cause, but all attack the liver, causing inflammation. The symptoms vary, but hepatitis E can cause jaundice.

One of the liver’s jobs is to process bilirubin, a waste product formed from old red blood cells.

If the liver isn’t working properly, bilirubin builds up in the blood, leading to the characteristic yellow hue.

The worry is that the disease puts patients at risk of severe liver damage or cirrhosis, where the liver becomes scarred and is unable to function, leading to liver failure, which can be fatal. Mail Online reported.

Though hepatitis E can be transmitted through blood transfusions and by eating contaminated shellfish, experts say that the main culprit is pigs — around 85 per cent of swine have been infected with the virus.

By coming into contact with pig waste - perhaps through a contaminated water supply - or eating undercooked pork, many people are unknowingly contracting the disease, says Dr Harry Dalton, a consultant gastroenterologist at the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, and one of the country’s leading experts on hepatitis E.

‘The source and route of hepatitis E infection are uncertain, but the most convincing evidence suggests that it is an infection derived from pigs,’ he says.

Gary Rhodes' pork tenderloin with cabbage recipe suggests the pork be cooked until it's 'still pink and moist in the middle'.