Expand / This picture of a bust of Alfred Nobel was shot just before the announcement of the winners of this 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 5, 2020. (charge: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / / Getty Images)
The very first known human cases of COVID-19 happened in December 2019. About a month went by until the virus has been identified as well as its entire genome sequence recognized. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honors a 25-year-long battle to recognize the virus we know these days as hepatitis C.
The hepatitis viruses are somewhat perplexing. There are currently five of these understood, and while they are united with their capacity to strike the liver, they are quite different in most other ways. The most important of these viruses are hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C, and they are due to three mostly unrelated germs –some actually disagree in their genetic substance, with DNA versus RNA–using quite different properties.
Among the initial sections identified by the medical research community has been the way the viruses propagate. Hepatitis A infections may begin because of contaminated food or water; compared, C and B are generally spread via contaminated needles or blood, which makes them a danger to the blood distribution. The hepatitis A virus was the very first recognized, leaving investigators concentrated on the bloodborne B and C. B has been another recognized, which will be when that year’s Nobel Laureates input the film.
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