Orange with 6Medias, published on Wednesday, February 01, 2023 at 11:33 am
The Institut Pasteur has brought to light a new virus after analyzes carried out on a patient, reveals CNEWS, Tuesday, January 31. Provisionally named Human Circovirus 1 (HCirV-1), this virus attacks the liver.
This kind of discovery is very rare.
The Institut Pasteur announced, in a press release at the end of January, that it had uncovered a new virus, hitherto unknown, attacking the liver, reports CNEWS, Tuesday January 31. This infectious agent was discovered after examinations carried out on a sixty-year-old patient suffering from unexplained chronic hepatitis.
“She had benefited from a double heart and lung transplant seventeen years earlier, with very regular follow-upabounds Marc Eloit, head of the pathogen discovery laboratory at the Institut Pasteur. We were able to access many samples over several years, which allowed us to identify this new virus, which was unexpected to say the least.”
A virus already known in animals
This virus, provisionally called Human Circovirus 1 (HCirV-1), was detected while looking for the origin of the patient’s chronic hepatitis. “The involvement of HCirV-1 in hepatitis was then demonstrated through the analysis of samples from the patient taken in previous years for her follow-up as part of her transplants”details the Pasteur Institute.
If the Circovirus was still unknown as a pathogen in humans, it was already present in animals, especially pigs. There is nevertheless a vaccine for animals, in the absence of the HCirV-1 version, the origin of the infection of which is still being studied. A specific PCR test for the etiological diagnosis of hepatitis of unknown origin is nevertheless available, pending a serological test still in the experimental phase.
