Rating Hepatitis G Virus As Public Health Concern

As the list of non-A, non-B hepatitis viruses expands, the critical issue for virologists and public health authorities alike is whether these viruses are harmless cofactors or causative agents in disease. At the 36th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Kirk Fry of US firm Genelabs, who was involved in the discovery of the hepatitis G virus, reviewed the current state of research into the organism.

Genelabs worked with a large number of collaborators in characterizing the virus, especially the US Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health. The firm has now developed two commercial assays for HGV; one based on PCR (which can detect 200 copies/ml or more), and one (with Chiron) using branched DNA assay. The latter is not as sensitive as PCR, but can sometimes find cases which PCR cannot, and using the two tests together researchers can now reliably find HGV in the general population, according to Genelabs.

Using these tools, Genelabs and its collaborators have investigated four key questions which need to be answered to determine whether HGV represents a public health problem: