Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus, a discovery that led to cures for the deadly disease and tests to keep the virus out of the blood supply.
Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton were honored for their work over several decades on an illness that still plagues more than 70 million worldwide and kills over 400,000 each year. “For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world,” the Nobel Committee said.
Scientists had long known of the hepatitis A and B viruses, spread largely through contaminated food or water and blood, respectively, but were “toiling in the wilderness” to try to explain many other cases of liver disease until the blood-borne hepatitis C virus was identified in 1989, said a liver disease chief at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Now, it’s the only chronic viral infection that can be cured in almost all cases within a few months, using one of roughly half a dozen drugs. Without such treatment, the virus can lead to permanent scarring of the liver, liver cancer or the need for a transplant.
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