Many, Especially Baby Boomers, Don’t Even Know They’re Infected
More Americans die as a result of hepatitis C infection annually than from HIV-related causes, pointing out the need for expanded screening and improved access to care for hepatitis C, government researchers report.
“The decrease in deaths from HIV reflects the infrastructure that’s been set up to make access to highly effective treatments happen,” says researcher John Ward, MD, director of the division of viral hepatitis at the CDC.
Like HIV, hepatitis C is spread through contact with contaminated blood, most commonly through shared needles used with drugs. Also, as with HIV, the disease can be sexually transmitted, but that is not as common with hepatitis C. Most people don’t know they’re infected with hepatitis C until decades later, when routine blood tests uncover liver damage caused by the virus over time.
But two new drugs called protease inhibitors, which came on the U.S. market last year, have been shown to be highly effective in eliminating the virus in people with less-advanced liver disease when used with the conventional treatments pegylated interferon and ribavirin.
An estimated 3.2 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, which can lead to liver cancer, Ward and his co-authors write. About two-thirds of those infected are baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1964. In fact, Ward says, 1 in 33 Americans born during that period has hepatitis C, although at least half don’t know it because screening is rare.
Why baby boomers? “There was more injectable drug use in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s than there is now,” Ward says. In addition, he says, screening blood donors for hepatitis C didn’t begin until 1989, and infection-control practices in health care settings weren’t as rigorous back then.
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SOURCE: WebMD
Rita Rubin
