Hepatitis Hope

A breakthrough vaccine

Hepatitis B can be among the most unpleasant of illnesses. In its more severe form, the viral liver infection produces a loss of appetite, vomiting, fatigue and jaundice. In some cases, the infection leads to cirrhosis or perhaps even cancer of the liver. The villain virus appears in the blood, saliva, semen or breast milk of about 200 million human "carriers" who may show no signs of the disease but can transmit the virus to others.

Now a team of researchers led by Epidemiologist Wolf Szmuness of the New York Blood Center has concluded a large-scale and successful test of a hepatitis B vaccine. The test involved 1,083 homosexuals, who are at particularly high risk of developing hepatitis B because of their sexual practices. Half the men received the vaccine, the rest a placebo. The men were given three injections in six months. Only eleven cases of hepatitis B occurred among the vaccinated men, compared with 60 in the control group.

The development of the vaccine began in 1963, when Dr. Baruch Blumberg of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia identified a protein from the hepatitis B virus in the blood of an Australian aborigine. Researchers soon found that the protein, dubbed Australia antigen, existed in large quantities in the blood of carriers. Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University then discovered that when infected blood serum is boiled, the virus is killed but the antigen remains able to induce production of the antibodies that prevent the illness. The experimental vaccine was developed by Virologist Maurice Hilleman of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research. Should no hitches develop, the first hepatitis B vaccine may become commercially available in two years. sb

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