Hepatitis F

What is hepatitis F?

Hepatitis F is a hypothetical virus linked to hepatitis. Several hepatitis F candidates emerged in the 1990s; none of these reports have been substantiated.

Most recently, it is reported that novel viral particles had been discovered in the stool of post-transfusion, non-hepatitis A, non-hepatitis B, non-hepatitis C, non-hepatitis E patients. Injection of these particles, into the bloodstream of Indian rhesus monkeys caused hepatitis, and the virus was named hepatitis F, or Toga virus. Further investigations failed to confirm the existence of the virus, and it was delisted as a cause for infectious hepatitis.

A subsequently-discovered virus thought to cause hepatitis was named hepatitis G, though its role in hepatitis has not been confirmed and it is now considered synonymous with GB virus C and is an "orphan virus" with no causal links to any human disease.