Discovery of the hepatitis C virus

The discovery of the hepatitis C virus resolved a long-standing puzzle of hepatitis after blood transfusion that was caused by neither hepatitis A nor hepatitis B. In the mid 1970s Harvey Alter and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health showed that most such cases had another cause, and transmission studies in chimpanzees, by Alter's group and independently by Edward Tabor at the US Food and Drug Administration, proved that a new form, first called non-A, non-B hepatitis, was probably viral. The virus was confirmed in 1988 using the group's stored patient samples and reported in 1989, which led to blood and donor screening that nearly ended hepatitis from transfusion. Alter shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Michael Houghton and Charles Rice for the discovery.