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Although this year is undoubtedly dominated by the coronavirus, his research has yet to win a Nobel Prize: another potentially much more dangerous virus has brought the greatest recognition in scientific life, sharing Harvey J. Alternek, Michael Houghtonnak Y Charles M. Rice-nak. The researchers received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery and identification of the hepatitis C virus.
The hepatitis C virus was first studied in the 1970s, previously only the other two hepatitis viruses, A and B, were known to medicine. However, the existence of these does not explain why, despite effective therapies for them, there are still so many patients with liver damage after blood transfusions; This was what began to pierce Harvey J. Alter’s eyes so much that he began to investigate mysterious diseases.
The hepatitis A virus is transmitted through infected drinking water and food, while hepatitis B is transmitted through the blood. After the discovery of both, an effective diagnostic method and therapy were developed, but there were still many patients who had not responded to treatment for hepatitis B and had received the disease through a blood transfusion. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 Baruch blumbergnek the discovery of hepatitis B, but it was inexplicable why, despite accurate diagnosis and effective vaccination, diseases still exist.
Alter was a researcher at the US National Institutes of Health.Just when he realized that there must be a third virus: He named it virus not A, not B (hepatitis not A, not B), but it failed for more than ten years after that. to isolate the pathogen.
This is where Michael Houghton came into the picture, who, as an employee of the Chiron pharmaceutical company, began experimenting with chimpanzees with his colleagues. Hepatitis C, as it turned out,
apart from humans, it can only infect chimpanzees.
The researchers extracted DNA fragments from nucleic acids found in the blood of infected chimpanzees and examined them. They knew that although most of the samples would come from the chimpanzee’s own genome, some traces of the mysterious virus would also be found. They then searched infected people for antibodies to this virus and found a new RNA virus, hepatitis C.
To determine whether this virus could infect and cause disease on its own, Charles M. Rice was able to discover that a researcher at the University of Washington had used genetic engineering to recognize the part of the viral genome that is involved in viral replication. When Rice’s engineered virus was introduced into the chimpanzee’s livers, their bodies responded in the same way and began to produce antibodies like the previously observed infection. This ensures that hepatitis C can cause an infection.
It’s not mild anyway – severe hepatitis C infection is a major cause of liver tumors and liver transplant surgeries, for example. Globally, 70 million cases of hepatitis C have been recorded, but this is probably only a fraction of the actual number of patients, as the disease often remains unrecorded and even goes unrecognized. The infection is responsible for 400,000 deaths a year.
The disease mainly affects the liver, but it can also spread to other organs. The bad news is that it only causes symptoms in 15 percent of cases, and the incubation period can be up to 25 weeks. With proper recognition and good diagnostic procedures, 50 to 80 percent of patients recover, but 80 percent develop a chronic disease.
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