Abstract
Hepatitis viruses comprise a group of very diverse pathogens that primarily infect the liver, but belong to very different virus families with very different replication strategies (hepatitis A virus (HAV) Picornaviridae, hepatitis B virus (HBV) Hepadnaviridae, hepatitis C virus (HCV) Flaviviridae, hepatitis delta virus (HDV) genus Deltavirus, not assigned to a family yet, and hepatitis E virus (HEV) Hepeviridae). All of them have in common a high genome plasticity, and have received special attention because of their worldwide distribution in human population, infecting hundreds of million people, causing either acute and/or chronic infections that in many cases lead to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, which is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The huge number of infected people all over the world is the best proof of how different replication and transmission strategies, with the common factor of variability, may succeed in terms of viral persistence.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Origin And Evolution Of Viruses, 2nd Edition |
| Editors | E Domingo, CR Parrish, JJ Holland |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Pages | 303-349 |
| Number of pages | 47 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-0-08-056496-8 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-0-12-374153-0 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2008 |
Keywords
- B e-antigen
- Dependent rna-polymerase
- Cellular immune-responses
- Core promoter region
- Open reading frame
- Fragment-length-polymorphism
- Complete nucleotide-sequence
- Naturally-occurring variants
- Liver-transplant recipients
- T-lymphocyte responses
