9 – VIRAL HEPATITIS

Publisher Summary Hepatitis was not a novel disease. Sporadic outbreaks of inflammatory disease of the liver had frequently been seen, and during World War II, the allied and German armies suffered severely from hepatitis, particularly during the North African campaign. Viral hepatitis is a mixture of at least four distinct diseases and the causative agents of types A and B have been identified. Of particular interest has been the development of increasingly sensitive methods for detecting hepatitis B infectivity in blood samples. The application of these methods in blood banking has brought a reduction in the hazard of post-transfusion hepatitis. The progress in research on viral hepatitis was hampered by the lack of a simple animal model and the inability to propagate human hepatitis viruses in cell culture. At a time when many advances were being made in the understanding and control of common viral illnesses such as polio, measles, rubella, and mumps, little was being accomplished in the conquest of hepatitis.