Introduction:

Hepatitis is an inflammatory disease that affects the liver. The hepatitis A virus produces a generally self-limited acute infectious picture in humans, for which there is no specific treatment.

Objective:

To update on current behavior and management of hepatitis A virus infection.

Methods:

A bibliographic review was carried out during September and October 2021, consulting 156 articles in English and Spanish from databases such as SciELO, PubMed, Lilacs and Medigraphic, of which 30 citations were used. The combination of Boolean terms and operators and theoretical methods such as: analysis-synthesis, induction-deduction and historical-logical was used.

Results:

The behavior of the infection caused by the hepatitis A virus was addressed, emphasizing its epidemiology, morphological and functional characteristics that allow its infectivity, evolution and clinical manifestations, complications, treatment and current perspectives.

Conclusions:

The hepatitis A virus produces an acute infectious picture. It occurs both sporadically and epidemically. It is the most common form of acute viral hepatitis. Transmission is person-to-person by the fecal oral route. Symptoms related to acute viral hepatitis are variable and nonspecific. The diagnosis of certainty is carried out by means of serological tests and molecular biology techniques for the identification of the virus. There is no specific treatment for this infection.

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