Stockholm - The discovery of the hepatitis C virus has earned the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine for Americans Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice and Briton Michael Houghton, Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced on Monday.
The three forms of hepatitis - A, B and C - are responsible for multiple liver inflammation deaths. But for decades, only A and B were known to science. Alter, Houghton and Rice managed to isolate the virus that caused the C form, allowing treatments to be created.
"The 2020 Medicine Laureates' discoveries revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives," said the institute.
Alter is credited with identifying the third type of hepatitis and Houghton with isolating it, while Rice provided the final proof of its existence.
The discovery was part of "landmark achievements in our ongoing battle with infections," said Gunilla Karlsson-Hedestam, professor of immunology and member of the Nobel Committee.
She said that according to estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) there were 70 million hepatitis C cases globally, but this was "likely an underestimation," adding that the disease caused about 400,000 deaths each year.
"It is one of the most common causes of liver cancer and liver transplantation," Karlsson-Hedestam said.
Nobel Prize organizers asid they managed to contact two of the three laureates, Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the Nobel Committee, said.
Alter and Rice were woken up by the call and were "extremely surprised, really happy and speechless almost," he said of their reactions.
"They were definitely not sitting by the phone because I called them a couple of times before, without any answer," Perlmann said.
By tradition, the prize-givers contact the winners by telephone to inform them just before making the public announcement.
Alter, born 1935, is with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at Bethesda in Maryland in the US.
Houghton was born in Britain and earned his doctorate in 1977 at King's College London. He later joined G.D. Searle & Company before moving to Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, California in 1982. He has been with the University of Alberta in Canada since 2010.
Charles M Rice, born in 1952 in Sacramento, is at Rockefeller University in the US.
Baruch Blumberg of the US was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering hepatitis B in 1976.
Laureates in the fields of physics, chemistry, literature and peace are also due to be announced in the coming week, followed by economics next week.
With the exception of economics, the prizes were endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-96), the inventor of dynamite.
This year, each prize is worth 10 million kronor (1.1 million dollars), an increase from the 9 million kronor in recent years.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was first awarded in 1901.
Last year US-born researchers William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza and British scientist Peter Ratcliffe were awarded for their work on cells' use of oxygen.
dpa