[Viral hepatitis]

The advances achieved in the last years with regard to the knowledge features of viral hepatitis are included in this review. Important features are the development of inactivated virus vaccine for hepatitis A; the right handling of serological markers which has permitted a more accurate view of the prevalence, transmission mechanisms, evolution, etc. of the different types of hepatitis the increasing use of vaccination against hepatitis B which allows to envisage a significative decrease in the incidence of this disease in the next years and finally the discovering of a clon of the genome of the virus which causes Non A non B hepatitis (hepatitis C) and which led to the development of a specific test to detect antibodies against the virus.