An estimated four million Americans are currently infected with Hepatitis C, a viral infection of the liver that often leads to chronic liver disease. Making it a leading public health concern, chronic Hepatitis C is difficult to treat and can have devastating health consequences. An increase in awareness and testing for Hepatitis C had been responsible for a decline in new infections; however, an alarming new trend is behind a rise in newly acquired cases.
About Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is spread via blood-to-blood contact, just like the well-known illness HIV – the virus that causes AIDS. Despite being spread the same way, few realize that the Hepatitis C virus is approximately 7 times more infectious than HIV. What makes Hepatitis C especially insidious is that most people don’t have any symptoms for years after becoming infected.
Because it is difficult for the body to clear the Hepatitis C virus (HCV), about 85 percent of those infected develop chronic liver disease. As is the case with any type of chronic liver disease, chronic Hepatitis C progressively damages the liver. When vague symptoms like fatigue and abdominal pain finally do appear, the disease has likely already caused serious, perhaps irreversible, damage to the liver.
Although there are potentially dozens of vehicles for transmitting this virus, the primary ways Hepatitis C is transmitted are from blood transfusions prior to 1992 and the sharing of intravenous needles. Since testing of the blood supply now screens for Hepatitis C, intravenous drug use is believed to be the number one cause of new Hepatitis C infections.
