2022年经济学人 儿童不明原因肝炎是怎么回事？(1)（在线收听）

Science and Technology

科技版块

Virology

病毒学

Strange brew

奇怪的混合

The cause of a new type of hepatitis in children is found

在儿童中发现了一种新型肝炎的原因

In April mysterious cases of hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, began appearing in children around the world.

今年4月，世界各地的儿童开始出现新的肝炎病例，这是一种肝脏炎症。

They were not caused by the hepatitis viruses that typically cause the illness.

它们不是由通常导致这种疾病的肝炎病毒引起的。

The World Health Organisation has reported more than 1,000 probable cases in 35 countries.

世界卫生组织报告了35个国家出现的1000多例疑似病例。

Some children have required liver transplants and at least 22 have died.

一些儿童需要进行肝脏移植，至少有22人死亡。

Researchers have been scrambling to find the cause.

研究人员一直在努力寻找原因。

Two studies posted this week on medRxiv, a preprint server, propose an answer -- co-infection with two common and usually innocuous viruses, probably helped by certain gene variations in the children who fell ill.

本周发表在预印本服务器MedRxiv上的两项研究提出了一个答案--两种常见且通常无害的病毒合并感染，可能是患病儿童的某些基因变异所致。

Sars-cov-2 was ruled out as a culprit.

Sars-cov-2病毒被排除在原因之外。

One of the infections seems to be from human adenovirus, a common bug in children that causes stomach upsets but does not make them very ill.

其中一种感染似乎来自人类腺病毒，这是一种儿童常见的细菌，会导致胃部不适，但不会使他们病得严重。

A cluster of the strange hepatitis cases appeared shortly after a spike in adenovirus infections, though it was unclear what role the virus might be playing, because it is often present in healthy children too.

在腺病毒感染激增后不久，出现了一系列奇怪的肝炎病例，但目前尚不清楚这种病毒可能起到了什么作用，因为它通常也存在于健康的儿童体内。

In the latest research, led by teams at the University of Glasgow and University College London, researchers investigated the blood and livers of 26 children with the strange hepatitis and compared the results with those from more than 100 children of the same age, including healthy children, children with adenovirus but normal liver function, and children with hepatitis for which the cause was known.

在格拉斯哥大学和伦敦大学学院的团队领导的最新研究中，研究人员调查了26名患有这种奇怪肝炎的儿童的血液和肝脏，并将结果与100多名同龄儿童的结果进行了比较，其中包括健康儿童、腺病毒携带者但肝功能正常的儿童，以及病因已知的肝炎儿童。

Collectively, the two studies found that 25 out of the 26 children with the mysterious hepatitis were also infected with adeno-associated virus 2 (aav2).

这两项研究共同显示，在26名患有神秘肝炎的儿童中，有25人也感染了腺相关病毒2 (aav2)。

This virus was rarely found in the children without that form of hepatitis and, when present in them, it was in much lower quantities.

这种病毒很少在没有这种肝炎的儿童中发现，即使出现，病毒数量也低得多。