Infectious Hepatitis

The high incidence of infectious hepatitis during World War II and the immediate postwar years led to many clinical and laboratory studies of this disease. 1-4 Since it was not transmissible to laboratory animals, several investigations in which the infectious agent was administered to human volunteers made it possible to define more clearly the clinical course of the disease and its correlation with changes in various laboratory parameters. 5-10 At about this time it was also shown that γ-globulin conferred passive immunity against infectious hepatitis. 11,12 More recently it has been reported that in institutional outbreaks of hepatitis, persons who received γ-globulin were apparently protected for periods as long as seven to eight months. 13-15 Stokes and his associates 15 postulated that during the early period of passive protection from γ-globulin, the patients were exposed to hepatitis virus and that subclinical infection was followed by the development of active immunity.