SCIENTISTS at Southampton University hope their breakthrough in hepatitis C research will lead to better treatment for sufferers.

They have teamed up with researchers in the US to analyse how infected people's own defence systems sometimes dealt with the virus.

More than 500,000 people in the UK have hepatitis C virus (HCV), which often leads to chronic infections that can cause fatal liver problems.

About 1,000 patients from the UK and the US were involved in the study, some of whom were chronically infected and some whose bodies had cleared the virus without needing treatment.

Scientists discovered that natural killer cells in people's systems could provide a central defence against the infection.

They identified a specific combination of genes in individuals whose bodies had cleared the virus naturally.

Dr Salim Khakoo, of Southampton's Infection, Inflammation and Repair Division, who co-authored the research paper, said: "We believe that this study is a significant advance in the understanding of hepatitis C virus infection."

Although treatments can control the virus in some patients, the infection is normally hard to treat.

The virus is carried in the blood, and people with the infection can pass it on if their blood gets under the skin or into the bloodstream of another person.

Dr Khakoo added he hoped the research findings could eventually lead to new treatments.