Vaccine for Hepatitis A

Hepatitis A is caused by the Hep A virus affecting the liver. Hep A is a highly contagious virus that can be contracted through the fecal to oral route, causing millions of people to be infected worldwide. Hepatitis A is wide spread and affects the population in a very high percentage, but only shows symptoms in a limited amount.

A person can become infected with Hepatitis A from contact with a person, object, food or water that present the virus. The incubation period ranges from two to six weeks, with an average of 28 days. Poor hygiene is usually the cause for hepatitis A, which mostly appears in underdeveloped countries. Children are at a high risk of contracting the disease, but does not show symptoms in 90% of cases, which only means that their bodies become immune to the virus later in life.

The primary methods of hepatitis A prevention are sanitation, good hygiene and a vaccine. The hepatitis A vaccine manages to protect a person for a period of 10 years or more and is effective in over 95% of cases. It was first developed and used on children living in areas that presented a high risk of infection, but is now recommended for all children.

The vaccine against hepatitis contains an inactivated strand of the Hep A virus. The original virus is made to die and then introduced into the body by means of the vaccine. The human immune system finds the foreign object and reacts to it by creating antibodies able to fight the virus. But since it is dead, it causes no damage to the host, thus easy elimination is made by the immune system. If the hep A virus is caught again later on in life, even if still alive, the immune system will then know how to react to it and suppress it before the virus can do any damage.