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Hepatitis A
Hepatitis
B
Hepatitis C
Causes
Your liver is located on the right side of your abdomen, just
beneath your lower ribs. It performs more than 500 functions,
including processing most of the nutrients absorbed from your
intestines, removing drugs, alcohol and other harmful
substances from your bloodstream, and manufacturing bile — the
greenish fluid stored in your gallbladder that helps digest
fats. Your liver also produces cholesterol, blood-clotting
factors and certain other proteins.
Because of the complexity of the liver and its exposure to so
many potentially toxic substances, it would seem especially
vulnerable to disease. But the liver has an amazing capacity
for regeneration — it can heal itself by replacing or
repairing injured cells. It's also constructed so that healthy
cells will take over the function of damaged cells, either
indefinitely or until the damage has been repaired. Yet in
spite of this, your liver is prone to a number of diseases,
including viral hepatitis.
Hepatitis A virus is one of six currently identified strains
of viral hepatitis — the others are B, C, D, E and G. The
strains differ in severity and in the way they spread.
HAV is usually transmitted via the fecal-oral route. That
means that someone with the virus handles food you eat without
washing his or her hands after using the toilet. You can also
contract the virus by drinking contaminated water, eating raw
shellfish from water polluted with sewage or being in close
contact with a person who's infected — even if that person has
no signs or symptoms. In fact, the disease is most contagious
before signs and symptoms ever appear.
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