New Virus Has Strong Association With Hepatitis C
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New Human Virus Linked With Hepatitis C
December 22, 2015 | by Justine Alford
Each year, millions of people across the globe depend on life-saving blood transfusions. Needless to say, ensuring this limited supply is clean is imperative to ensure the safety of vulnerable recipients. This message has just been highlighted by a new study, which identified a novel human virus that seems to be transmissible by blood products. Furthermore, it appears to be strongly linked with the hepatitis C virus.
Though clearly blood-borne and infectious, at this stage scientists don’t know whether the virus, provisionally called human pegivirus 2 (HPgV-2), can cause disease. But what is interesting is that back in September, a separate, independent study also identified this virus from a different sample of people. Though given a slightly different name, human hepegivirus 1 (HHpV-1), the authors of the present study are confident they are not distinct entities.
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