Hepatitis C Information Central

By Jamie Talan. STAFF WRITER

By analyzing blood samples taken from servicemen in 1948, federal scientists have determined that hepatitis C, a virus only identified in 1989, has been around for at least 50 years.

Now the researchers are searching medical histories of the infected servicemen to see specifically how the virus affected their health, and whether it has changed in those servicemen who are still alive. The virus is known to be fast mutating, a factor that tends to prevent developing a vaccine.

The results, which show an infection rate in the military that's similar to the current rate, could offer researchers new clues about a viral infection that some scientists believed was a new species in the world of infectious organisms.

"This finding tells us a lot about the hepatitis C infection," said Dr. Leonard Seeff, a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "As we begin to find those men who harbor the virus, we will be able to tell how it behaves over a 50-year period."

Seeff analyzed blood samples from 8,500 Air Force soldiers that had been stored since 1948. The samples were taken following a massive strep infection spread across the military bases. Seeff and his colleagues found that .4 percent of the blood samples contained antibodies to hepatitis C.

"It is not a new infection," said Seeff, who presented the findings at a recent liver meeting. He will also discuss the study in early June during an international hepatitis conference held at the federal health institute in Bethesda.

He said that epidemiologists find similar rates of hepatitis C among military personnel today. The next step is to find people who have died and to see whether liver disease was the precipitating factor.

Nearly 4 million Americans are believed to have hepatitis C, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The virus, which can lead to liver failure and cancer, is blamed for about 10,000 deaths a year. It is the leading cause of chronic liver disease and transplants. However, the government has estimated that as many as half of those thought to have the infection, don't know they have it since patients can go for two or three decades before observable symptoms emerge.

One of five recognized hepatitis viruses (identified as A through E), type C was categorized as a specific microbe by Dr. Michael Houghton of the California biotech company Chiron, which then took another year to develop a blood test.

The late-bloomer timing has led some to suggest this silent killer - for which there is no vaccine and no completely effective treatment - will be a major factor in the nation's health picture well into the millennium.

Indeed, speaking before a congressional subcomittee in March, 1998, Dr. David Satcher, the U.S. surgeon general, characterized the virus as "a grave threat to our society." He and others testified that although the number of new cases of hepatitis C has decreased since the blood test became available, the death toll for people who contracted the disease prior to the test could easily triple by the year 2010.

One main problem, Satcher and others have said, is that there is a disturbing lack of knowledge about hepatitis C. "We just don't have a handle on the natural history of the viral infection," which means scientists are unsure when the microbe first came to be or in what form, Dr. Charles Mendenhall, a professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati, said in an interview with Newsday last year.

The first generation of an antibody test for hepatitis C became available in 1990, and now there are much more sensitive tests to pick up footprints of the virus in blood. Experts say the spread of hepatitis C probably took a quantam leap in the 1960s - when it was known simply as non-A, non-B hepatitis - as more people began experimenting with injectable drugs. Sharing dirty needles infected with the hepatitis virus is a main route of transmission, experts say.

Seeff is excited by the thought of finding these Air Force veterans infected with hepatitis C. The virus is so crafty that it mutates and changes its form quite often, making a vaccine against it unlikely. If they find soldiers who are still positive, Seef said, they can see how the virus has mutated over a 50-year period.

Copyright 1999, Newsday Inc.

1948 GIs Key to Hepatitis C / Study wants to know effect on their health., 05-21-1999, pp A24.

Veterans Misc.table of Contents

table of Contents