noun, plural elegies. 1. a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. 2. a poem written in elegiac meter. 3. a sad or mournful musical composition. Origin of elegy.
Hepatitis D virus (HDV) is an RNA virus that is structurally unrelated to hepatitis A (HAV), hepatitis B (HBV), or hepatitis C virus (HCV). It was discovered in 1977. HDV causes a unique infection that requires the assistance of viral particles from HBV to replicate and infect other hepatocytes.Its clinical course is varied and ranges from acute, self-limited infection to acute, fulminant liver failure.
The virus was named after the city of Marburg, where most of the more than 30 cases in the 1967 epidemic were documented. RAVV was discovered in 1987, in a 15-year-old Danish boy who suffered from viral hemorrhagic fever in Kenya; the strain was named for the patient.