Many viruses affect more or less selectively the liver together with other organs in man and animals. Some produce disease in normal individuals, some others harbor in many people but produce intercurrent disease only in immunocompromised once. The most common viroses which do or many involve the liver will be here briefly illustrated.
- Yellow fever, the first recorded hepatotropic virus.
An exotic group of 3 Arenaviruses as infectious and dramatic as yellow fever.
-Lassa fever, in north-east Nigeria.
-Junin hemorrhagic fever in Argentina, affecting maize and wheat field workers. 15% mortality. Transmitted through the urine of rodents.
-Machupo hemorrhagic feverin Bolivia. 20% mortality.
- Marburg Virus disease also called "green monkey disease",discovered in 1967 in laboratories in Germany and Yugoslavia by handling green monkeys from Uganda. Fatality rate 29%.
-Ebola virus disease. It produced an epidemic in Sudan and Zaire in 1976. 50% mortality, at least. Clinical course similar to Marburg Virus disease. Named after a small river.
-Rift valleyfever. The virus originated in sub-Saharan Africa among sheep and cattle. It diffused to lower Egypt where it has produced a couple of epidemics in 1977-78 with high mortality among animals and man.
-Crimean/Congo hemorrhagic fever was notices in southern Russia after the second world war and some time later in Africa and Pakistan. The virus in ticks of goats and cattle. The infection acquired byn carries a fatality rate of 70%. It is now found in Iraq and Dubai. It produces sever extensive perioral and perinasal hemorrhages of skin and mucosae with thrombocytopenia and liver failure.
There is another large group of viruses which affect the liver and other organs especially in immunocompromised patients:
Epstein-barr virus (infectious mononucleosis).
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
Herpes viruses (herpes simplex, varicella)
Rubella (German measles).
Enteroviruses (Coxsackie viruses, ECHO viruses).
Adenoviruses (Rhinitis, lymphadenopathy, keratoconjunctivitis especially in children).