Recent developments in hepatitis a

Abstract

The past 10 years have seen an explosion of knowledge about viral hepatitis. The accidental discovery of Australia antigen by Blumberg in 1963 (Blumberg et al., 1965) and the independent recognition by Okochi & Murakami (1968) and Prince (1968) 5 years later, that this provided a means of detecting and quantitating infection with the hepatitis B virus, has led to an enormous advance in the understanding of type B hepatitis. In contrast, progress in hepatitis A has been slow, because of the absence of reliable laboratory tests to detect infection with this virus. © 1978 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved: reproduction in whole or part not permitted.