What Is the Australia Antigen?: An antigen is a substance that invokes an immune response in the body. The word is a contraction of the term "antibody-generator," meaning that its presence causes the immune system to create antibodies to respond to a perceived attack or infection. The Australia antigen is a marker of hepatitis, which is a viral inflammation of the liver. The discovery and analysis of the antigen played a crucial part in efforts to fight the disease.
Hepatitis, which comes in many forms, is an dangerous infection of the liver known to cause epidemics that may infect a large number of people. Though scientists had been tracking the disease since the 19th century, means of discovering the infection were still quite primitive. It was postulated that many patients contracted hepatitis through blood transfusions from those already infected, but the means of identifying the virus hadn't yet been discovered. In the early 1960s, Dr. Baruch Samuel Blumberg, working in concert with Dr. Harvey Alter, first identified the Australia antigen after noting an unusual reaction when the blood from an Aboriginal Australian was added to serum from hemophiliac and leukemic patients.
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