Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver and over the past months, the UK and many other countries have seen a significant rise in this deadly disease. The only treatment for many of these youngsters is a liver transplant.
The question everyone has been struggling to answer about the rise of hepatitis cases in children is what’s causing it. Two separate studies have now concluded that it may be related to an Adeno Virus
Both studies found the presence of a virus called adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) in nearly all the affected children. It was also noted that all those developing hepatitis also had a gene defect which affected their immune response to this virus.
Nearly all children are affected by AAV2 in childhood, it is a common virus and was previously thought not to cause any harm. It inserts its DNA into the child’s cells and that DNA stays there for life. (This is not uncommon; indeed, our DNA contains the remnants of some ancient viral infections).
It seems that AAV2 is an unusual virus in that for it to replicate and turn into an infection it requires the presence of another virus such as another Adeno virus or herpes simplex (cold sore) virus – however nearly all these children had a genetic defect which affected their immunity.
The working hypothesis is that these children were infect by AAV2 in conjunction with another virus and because of their gene defect, which affects their immunity the virus quickly led to hepatitis.
It seems there’s always been a small background number of children with this type of hepatitis, but the numbers were very small. During lockdown children were no longer exposed to the virus. Lockdown ends and then bang; a whole group of children are exposed to it in one go and we suddenly see much larger numbers. It is the most likely a passing effect and the numbers will fall back down to a very low level as the group of children who were not exposed become exposed.
That’s all for this month!
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Paul Zollinger-Read CBE
