Viral kinetics of the Hepatitis C virus

Hepatitis A virus and hepatitis B virus were identified as the cause of infectious hepatitis and serum hepatitis respectively in the beginning of the seventies. After introduction of screening tests for hepatitis A and B 4 only 25% of the cases of post transfusion hepatitis were found to be caused by hepatitis B and none by hepatitis A. One or more viruses other than hepatitis A or B were suspected to be the cause of the remaining 75% of post-transfusion hepatitis. Initially, this hepatitis was named non-A, non-B hepatitis. After the discovery in 1989 of the hepatitis C virus (HCV), HCV was found to explain the large majority of post transfusion hepatitis 5,6. HCV is an enveloped, s'mgle-stranded RNA virus, approximately 50 nm in diameter, that has been classified as a separate genus in the Flaviviridae family J Occasionally acute viral hepatitis with jaundice occurs, but usually HCV presents as chronic hepatitis. In fact it appeared to be the most important causes of chronic viral hepatitis in Europe and the United States.