Meridian Life Science has revealed the challenges involved in finding an effective mechanism to stop the HCV virus from spreading.
Worldwide, HCV is a troubling infectious disease.
Only about 20- 30 per cent of the population diagnosed with HCV recover, while the other 70-80 per cent develop a persistent infection resulting in chronic hepatitis and eventually liver failure, cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma.
Understanding HCV and finding an effective mechanism to stop the virus from spreading is a researcher's challenge.
A major contributing factor may be due to the virus having numerous genotypes and subtypes lending to the difficulty in identifying the immune responses that clear the acute infection.
In addition, a recently published study by scientists at McKeating Laboratory, Institute for Biomedical Research, University of Birmingham, demonstrated that the virus spreads 'by two different mechanisms: via intracellular virus particles or direct cell-to-cell transfer'.
This discovery along with many studies related to HCV-specific CD8 cells are motivating factors in continuing HCV research.
