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Science and Technology
科技版塊
Virology
病毒學
Strange brew
奇怪的混合
The cause of a new type of hepatitis in children is found
在兒童中發現了一種新型肝炎的原因
In April mysterious cases of hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, began appearing in children around the world.
今年4月，世界各地的兒童開始出現新的肝炎病例，這是一種肝臟炎癥。
They were not caused by the hepatitis viruses that typically cause the illness.
它們不是由通常導致這種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.
世界衛生組織報告了35個國家出現的1000多例疑似病例。
Some children have required liver transplants and at least 22 have died.
一些兒童需要進行肝臟移植，至少有22人死亡。
Researchers have been scrambling to find the cause.
研究人員一直在努力尋找原因。
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.
本周發表在預印本服務器MedRxiv上的兩項研究提出了一個答案--兩種常見且通常無害的病毒合并感染，可能是患病兒童的某些基因變異所致。
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.
其中一種感染似乎來自人類腺病毒，這是一種兒童常見的細菌，會導致胃部不適，但不會使他們病得嚴重。
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，出現了一系列奇怪的肝炎病例，但目前尚不清楚這種病毒可能起到了什么作用，因為它通常也存在于健康的兒童體內。
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.
在格拉斯哥大學和倫敦大學學院的團隊領導的最新研究中，研究人員調查了26名患有這種奇怪肝炎的兒童的血液和肝臟，并將結果與100多名同齡兒童的結果進行了比較，其中包括健康兒童、腺病毒攜帶者但肝功能正常的兒童，以及病因已知的肝炎兒童。
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).
這兩項研究共同顯示，在26名患有神秘肝炎的兒童中，有25人也感染了腺相關病毒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.
這種病毒很少在沒有這種肝炎的兒童中發現，即使出現，病毒數量也低得多。
