Because there are only acute forms of this type of the disease, which will automatically recover within a period of 6 months max, the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t find it relevant enough to put effort on developments, if we compare this with other types of the disease, which are often chronic and can cause more serious symptoms, like liver failure. The body will treat the HAV =Hepatitis A Virus) on its own.

For treatment, a physician can tell the patient to give the liver rest, because then the virus will be dealt with quicker. The function of the liver needs to be used less, so the patient should eat less and, most importantly, shouldn’t drink any alcohol, because this causes the liver to work even more. This is because, to break down alcohol, the liver has to produce many enzymes to make the alcohol harmless to the body. First of all, ethanol needs to be converted to ethanal. The group of enzymes of ADH (=Alcohol dehydrogenase) are responsible for this. In this conversion, 2 H-atoms are split. The second step in making the alcohol harmless to the body is by converting the ethanal to acetic acid. This is done by mitochondria, relatively large organelles in the liver. The mitochondria use the group of enzymes of aldehyde dehydrogenase for this conversion. The next step is for the acetic acid to be converted into acetyl co enzyme A. A liver cell can bind the acetic acid, which flows through the blood stream in the liver now, to a co enzyme A. When the binding is complete, acetyl co enzyme A is produced. This will, lastly in the process of making the alcohol harmless to the body, be converted to carbon dioxide (CO2) and gaseous water (H2O, g). These compounds will then be breathed out of the body. This whole process takes up a lot of energy from the liver, which can make it vulnerable. This means that the virus can cause more damage to the organ. So, if alcohol isn’t being drunk by the patient, this whole process doesn’t have to take place and energy loss can be prevented, preventing vulnerability of the liver.