title: [Hepatitis viruses: from the old ones to the new ones. Will the alphabet be enough to list them all?].
abstract: Viral infection is by far the most frequent cause of hepatitis. Search for the causal virus is however difficult since they cannot be cultured on most cell lines in vitro and because regulatory factors required for viral expression are found only in the human hepatocytes which cannot be maintained in vitro sufficiently long for experiments. To date, viruses A, B, C and E have been well documented. Virus D, a defective virus which only develops in association with virus B has also been identified. As have others, we have also found evidence of the existence of a non-A, non-B, non-C, non-E virus (non A-E). Currently, the diagnosis of non A-E hepatitis can only be made by elimination. Our personal experience suggests that non A-E hepatitis could be incriminated in less than 10% of the acute cases requiring hospitalization. Other viruses have been isolated. We were unable to confirm the pathogenic nature of a virus isolated in India in 1994 and assigned the letter F. Virus G has been identified in a patient with post-transfusion hepatitis and corresponding serology has been found positive in 46% of a population of drug abusers and 1.7% of blood donors in the United States. Isolates of the virus GB were first recognized in 1967. There are three viruses: Ga, Gb and Gc, belonging to the Flavivirus or Pestivirus, analogous to the hepatitic C virus. Virus G appears to be identical with virus Gc. The exact pathogenic nature of all these viruses remains to be determined. Search for new viruses would suggest that there are few new pathological situations indicating the presence of unknown viruses. This observation might mean that the alphabet will be, thankfully, largely sufficient to enumerate the hepatitis viruses.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pillot
mesh_terms: D006518:Hepatitis Viruses / Q000145:classification*; D006525:Hepatitis, Viral, Human / Q000266:history / Q000821:virology*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans
vernacular_title: Virus des hépatites, des anciens aux nouveaux. L'alphabet suffira-t-il pour les dénombrer?