Encyclopedia > Hepatitis

  Article Content

Hepatitis

Hepatitis is any of several liver diseases characterised by inflammation, liver enlargement, jaundice, fever and abdominal pain. It can be caused by a number of different etiologies: some of these are drug, alcohol, or toxin-induced hepatitis, autoimmune disease, cholestasis, and viral hepatitis.

The commonest forms of viral hepatitis are known as hepatitis A[?], hepatitis B, and hepatitis C; all three of these are caused by viruses that can be transmitted sexually, by blood transfusion, or by shared syringes. Hepatitis A (which is often a milder form of this disease), is frequently transmitted by contaminated food, a route called fecal-oral contamination. Hepatitis B more often involves transmission by exposure to blood or other body fluids. About 1 million people die worldwide as a result of hepatitis B, often either of liver failure or liver cancer.

Two other viruses are known, hepatitis D and E, but considered as "additional" complications for types B and C.

Other viruses, such as cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus, can also cause infectious hepatitis.

Hepatitis C infection can exist undetected for periods as long as 10 to 20 years, and researchers estimate that millions of people are infected and have not yet displayed any symptoms.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Christiania

... in the city of Copenhagen. This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 30.7 ms