[Vaccination against hepatitis. Present and future]. / Impfung gegen Hepatitis. Gegenwart und Zukunft.

ABSTRACT

Hepatitis A virus, a member of the picornavirus group, has been adapted to growth in cell culture. Recently developed inactivated vaccines and attenuated hepatitis A strains are presently used in first field advance. Hepatitis B virus is prototype of the hepadna virus group. Based on purification of viral surface antigene (HBs Ag) from human sera, a safe and effective vaccine has been developed, which is now available for general use. Future vaccines against hepatitis B are presently developed with methods of modern genetic engineering. These vaccines will be based on the in vitro synthesis of oligopeptides or on expression of cloned viral DNA in bacteria, yeast cells or tissue cultures. The nature of the agents causing non-A-non-B hepatitis is still unknown. Thus there is no method available now to develop a procedure for immunoprevention of non-A-non-B hepatitis.