The liver is crucial to the body because it is involved in many functions essential to life.

For example, did you know that 25% of your blood volume goes through your liver every minute?

This means that every five minutes, your liver filters your entire blood supply.

Woman sleeping in bed

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Certainly, when the liver is having problems, the body lets you know in many different ways.

Symptoms are just a starting point.

To make a diagnosis of acute viral hepatitis requires more than symptoms.

In fact, doctors will use a variety of methods to make a diagnosis.

For example, a sore leg will usually just hurt in and around the leg.

Some people may have only one or two common symptoms.

Others may have all of the symptoms.

People experience viral hepatitis in different ways.

These symptoms are known to exist in people with viral hepatitis.

Your situation might be different.

But it’s true!

Depending on how your body responds to the initial infection, you might have no symptoms.

The word doctors use to describe a person with no symptoms is “asymptomatic.”

You still had the infection, but your body didn’t need to tell you about it.

Each of these stages match up with a specific clinical term that doctors use to describe viral hepatitis.

These symptoms are usually so general that most people wouldn’t expect viral hepatitis.

Symptoms begin after theincubation period, which is specific to the particular virus causing the infection.

Once you are exposed to the virus, the virus needs time to replicate.

Everyone could experience viral hepatitis a little bit differently.

Eventually, though, you’ll progress to the second stage of symptoms: the middle.

In addition, people with jaundice may have light-colored stools.

The liver usually processes bilirubin as a waste product.

Bilirubin builds up in the blood and starts to leak out into nearby tissues.

When enough of this chemical accumulates, the person appears jaundiced.

This leads them to the doctor’s office where blood work follows.

Also, other diseases can cause jaundice.

Coinfection or superinfectionwith hepatitis Dis considered a complication and the recovery time may be longer.

Also, recovery times after infection with hepatitis B and C can be very different for people with HIV.

Some people won’t get to the recovery stage.

Normally, most people get better.

A chronic infection will present with different signs and symptoms.

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