Opinion Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 7, 2022; 28(37): 5395-5402
Published online Oct 7, 2022. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i37.5395
Milestones in the discovery of hepatitis C
Octavio Campollo, Gerardo Amaya, P Aiden McCormick
Octavio Campollo, Center of Studies on Alcohol and Addictions, Antiguo Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Department of Medical Clinics, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara 44280, Jalisco, Mexico
Gerardo Amaya, Medical Clinics, CUCS, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara 44280, Jalisco, Mexico
P Aiden McCormick, Department of Hepatology, Saint Vincent’s University Hospital, National Liver Transplant Unit, Dublin D04, Ireland
Author contributions: Campollo O conceived the idea of the article, discussed and collaborated with the authors, answered the reviewers comments and reviewed the final version; Amaya G reviewed the literature and updated the references, made contributions to the manuscript, reviewed and corrected the drafts, and answered the reviewers comments; McCormick PA wrote several sections of earlier and final versions of the manuscript, reviewed and corrected the final draft, and, reviewed the English language.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Octavio Campollo, MD, PhD, Full Professor, Center of Studies on Alcohol and Addictions, Antiguo Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, Department of Medical Clinics, Universidad de Guadalajara, Calle Hospital 278, Col. El Retiro, Guadalajara 44280, Jalisco, Mexico. renaceboy@hotmail.com
Received: March 4, 2022
Peer-review started: March 4, 2022
First decision: March 27, 2022
Revised: April 11, 2022
Accepted: August 16, 2022
Article in press: August 16, 2022
Published online: October 7, 2022
Abstract

The discovery of hepatitis C has been a landmark in public health as it brought the opportunity to save millions of lives through the diagnosis, prevention and cure of the disease. The combined work of three researchers, Alter H, Houghton M and Rice C, which set the basis for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of hepatitis C apart from laying the ground work for a new approach to study infections in general and developing new antiviral agents. This is a story of a transfusion-associated infection. A series of clinical studies demonstrated the existence of an infectious agent associated with hepatitis. That was followed by the identification of what was later known to be the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and the development of diagnostic tests. It all preceded the full molecular identification and demonstration of a causal effect. Finally it ended up with the development and discovery of a new class of therapeutic drugs, the direct acting antivirals, which are now used not only to cure the disease but most probably, to eliminate the problem. This work started with Dr Alter H who demonstrated that a new virus was responsible for the majority of post-transfusion hepatitis followed by Houghton M who cloned the virus and developed the blood test to identify those cases that carried the virus. Finally, the work of Rice C demonstrated that a cloned HCV produced after applying molecular biology techniques could cause long-standing infection and cause the same disease as the one observed in humans.

Keywords: Hepatitis C, Nobel prize, Discovery, Diagnosis, Treatment, Elimination, World Health Organization initiative

Core Tip: The discovery of hepatitis C has been a landmark in public health as it brought the opportunity to save millions of lives through the diagnosis, prevention and cure of a disease that was perhaps noticed 5000 years ago. It was through the combined work of three researchers, Alter H, Houghton M and Rice C, which set the basis for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of hepatitis C apart from laying the ground work for a new approach to study infections in general and developing new antiviral agents.