Family Outbreaks of Infectious Hepatitis

Abstract

ALTHOUGH the epidemiology of infectious hepatitis has been extensively studied in institutional outbreaks,^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7} the incidence and mode of transmission of the disease in families in civilian life has received scant attention. Pickles,⁸ Propert,⁹ Newman¹⁰ and Kunkel¹¹ have reported outbreaks among members of single families and their immediate contacts. Ford,¹² in a study involving 300 cases in a civilian epidemic, found that 17 per cent of the households had multiple cases of infectious hepatitis.Stokes and Neefe¹³ first demonstrated the value of gamma globulin prepared from pooled human plasma in the prevention or modification of infectious hepatitis in a group of . . .