The hepatitis B virus has been infecting people since at least the Bronze Age, according to a new study published in the journal Nature by geneticists who teased the virus from 4,500-year-old human remains.
Hepatitis B was discovered in the 1960s, and a vaccine (and Nobel Prize) came swiftly thereafter. Despite the vaccine, the virus still kills people, and chronic infections cannot be cured.
Nearly 900,000 people with the virus died in 2015, mostly from liver complications, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 257 million people carry the virus that targets the liver and can be a risk factor for cancer.
