NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE 2020

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Awarded to three virus researchers.

Harvey J. Alter,Charles M.Rice of the U.S and Briton Michael Houghton of Britain won the prizes.

The award was for discovering and proving that a blood borne virus could cause Hepatitis C.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZuBBvwoVt1L1pZGt6

Dr.Alter discovered that liver diseases could be spread by blood transfusions that weren’t caused by Hepatitis A or B. Later,a team led by Dr.Houghton created a clone of a new virus from fragments found from the blood of an infected chimpanzee.

This identification was pathbreaking as it could reduce the spread of the disease by conducting tests at blood bank supplies. Hepatitis C virus can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Dr.Rice was able to use genetic engineering to generate a version of of the Hepatitis C virus .

This is the second Nobel prize for medicine for hepatitis virus.

Excerpts from The Hindu

Hepatitis C virus

  1. RNA virus
  2. Flaviviridae family
  3. Causes liver cancer and lymphomas in humans.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hepatitis-c : From here you can read about about how badly this virus can affect human lives.

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Published by Aparna K.S

Better knowledge of our strength and weaknesses is a necessity to our path to success. I have devoted most of my time preparing for UPSC civil service examinations.I have faced setbacks but definitely each year of preparation was a new phase of learning and experimenting different methods to understand the examination. In this process I became socially and politically aware and started viewing everything around me with reason and thinking about solutions for many issues. In this digital era we have information at our finger tip and I thought through this platform I could reach out to audience who can benefit from my articles academically.

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