Hepatitis C causes more than one million deaths per year worldwide.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Three scientists, Harvey J Alter, Charles M Rice, and Michael Houghton won the Nobel Prize for their work in the field of Medicine or Physiology on Monday (5/10). The work of scientists from America and England is the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus (HCV).
HCV spreads through contaminated blood and causes hepatitis C or a disease that attacks the liver. So far, liver inflammation has become a disease that is considered a global threat to human health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than 70 million cases of hepatitis worldwide and 400 thousand deaths every year. Hepatitis can be an acute infection or a chronic infection. There are different types of hepatitis with different causes.
For example, hepatitis A and hepatitis E are spread through contaminated food or water, but hepatitis B and hepatitis C are spread through contact with the blood of someone who has the disease. Hepatitis B and D can be spread through contact with other bodily fluids, which can occur from unprotected sex or sharing needles.
Invention virus hepatitis C very important, considering this is a critical step forward, in which the majority of cases of this disease are transmitted through blood remain unexplained. Hepatitis C virus identification is significant because it reveals the cause of the remaining chronic hepatitis cases. The discovery of HCV has also led to the development of diagnostic tests such as blood tests and new effective drugs, which save millions of lives.
According to the Nobel Committee, a methodical study of transfusion-related hepatitis by Harvey J Alter, at the United States (US) National Institutes of Health, suggests that an unknown virus is a common cause of chronic hepatitis. Michael Houghton used an untested strategy to isolate the genome of a new virus called the hepatitis C virus.
Charles M Rice, a researcher at the University of Washington in St Louis, provided final evidence to suggest that the hepatitis C virus alone can cause hepatitis. Bloodborne hepatitis such as hepatitis C is associated with significant morbidity and mortality.
Hepatitis C causes more than one million deaths per year worldwide, making it a global health problem, on a scale comparable to HIV infection and tuberculosis. Therefore, the findings of these three scientists made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people worldwide.
The Nobel Committee noted that the discovery of the hepatitis C virus was an important milestone in the ongoing battle against viral disease. The findings of three Nobel laureates have enabled the design of sensitive blood tests that have eliminated the risk of transfusion-borne hepatitis in many regions of the world.
Further breakthrough of this discovery also allowed the development of several antiviral drugs that could help cure the disease.
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