World Hepatitis Day

Hepatitis, an inflammation in liver that can be lethal. It's mostly caused by hepatoviruses, but there can be other causes too. These include autoimmune hepatitis and hepatitis brought on by drugs, alcohol, toxins, and other medications. When your body produces antibodies against the tissue in your liver, it develops a disorder called autoimmune hepatitis. In order to improve access to care for individuals with hepatitis, regardless of the type of hepatitis they may have, WHO is emphasising the need to bring hepatitis care closer to primary healthcare facilities and communities today on World Hepatitis Day 2022.

Nobel laureate Dr. Baruch Blumberg was born today who discovered the HBV, a diagnostic test, and vaccine for the virus. At the end of the 1960s he unexpectedly discovered an infectious agent for hepatitis B while researching blood proteins from people in different parts of the world. He demonstrated that the infectious agent was linked with a virus of a previously unknown type. The virus can be carried by people who do not become sick from it. These discoveries made possible both vaccines and tests to prevent spreading of the disease through blood transfusions. 

DISCOVERY OF HEPATITIS VIRUS & VACCINE

Dr. Blumberg discovered the hepatitis B virus in 1965 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for it. The virus was originally known as the "Australia Antigen," after a blood sample from an Australian aborigine that interacted with an antibody in an Amrican patient's serum with haemophilia.

Microbiologist Irving Millman collaborated with Dr. Blumberg to create a blood test for the hepatitis B virus. The risk of contracting hepatitis B after receiving blood transfusions dropped by 25% after blood banks started employing the test in 1971 to screen blood donations. Drs. Blumberg and Millman created the first hepatitis B vaccine using a heat-treated version of the virus, which was discovered the hepatitis B virus four years earlier.

VACCINES

The FDA granted human use approval for a more advanced plasma-derived hepatitis B vaccine in 1981. Blood from donors who were HBsAg-positive and infected with the hepatitis B virus was collected for this "inactivated" form of vaccine. In order to render the virus particles inactive, the pooled blood underwent a number of processes, including formaldehyde and heat treatment (also known as "pasteurisation"). The first commercial hepatitis B virus vaccine was produced by Merck Pharmaceuticals under the brand name "Heptavax." This vaccination was no longer recommended in 1990, and it is no longer offered.

A second generation of genetically modified (or DNA recombinant) hepatitis B vaccinations was developed as a result of research in 1986. The new recombinant vaccinations that are now approved are synthetically made and do not contain blood materials, making it impossible to contract hepatitis B from them.