An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

KUO, George Ching-Hung

1 entries
  • 12653

Isolation of a cDNA clone derived from a blood-borne non-A, non-B viral hepatitis genome.

Science, 244, 359-362, 1989.

In this paper Houghton (Nobel Prize 2020) and colleagues named  “hepatitis C” for the first time. They cloned and isolated the viral RNA genome and demonstrated that a patient who had high antibodies to a ‘native/wild strain’, reacted specifically with the cloned version. In “An assay for circulating antibodies to a major etiologic  virus of human non-A, non-B hepatitis,” Science, 244, 362-64, published immediately following in the same issue of Science, Alter and Houghton described the "diagnostic reagents to detect HCV’"mentioned in the first paper.

The discovery of Hepatitis C led to "the rapid development of diagnostic reagents to detect HCV in blood supplies which reduced the risk of acquiring HCV through blood transfusion from one in three to about one in two million.[3][4] It is estimated that antibody testing has prevented at least 40,000 new infections per year in the US alone and many more worldwide" (Wikipedia article on Michael Houghton (virologist) accessed 5-2020). (Order of authorship in the original publication: Choo, Kuo,Weiner, Overby Bradley, Houghton.)

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for additional background on this paper.)



Subjects: INFECTIOUS DISEASE › Hepatitis, VIROLOGY › VIRUSES (by Family) › Hepadnaviridae › Hepatitis C Virus