Manorama Yearbook Quiz

• Baruch S. Blumberg won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for his discovery of the hepatitis B virus.

• Blumberg was trained as a geneticist and studied the variation between certain types of proteins occurring in the blood of different individuals. 

• In connection with these studies he found the presence of a unique protein in the serum of a patient with hemophilia, who had received several transfusions, in tests against a serum collected from an Australian aborigin. 

• This protein was called Australia antigen and was first suspected to be some kind of serum protein. 

• However, during the years of 1966-68 Blumberg could prove that Australia antigen only appeared in connection with and in some cases after the special form of jaundice caused by infectious agents (hepatitis) which previously had been named inoculation or serum hepatitis. 

• Later, this disease was called hepatitis B.

• In 1969, Blumberg worked with microbiologist Irving Millman to develop the first hepatitis B vaccine, using a heat-treated form of the virus. 

• World Hepatitis Day is observed on July 28 to commemorate his birth anniversary.