Hepatitis C Kills More Americans Than All Other Reportable Infectious Diseases Combined [???]
December 26th, 2019Via: Stanford:
The hepatitis C virus now kills more Americans than all other reportable infectious diseases combined — including HIV. Acute cases of HCV have increased 3.5-fold over the last decade, particularly among young, white, injection drug users.
Women aged 15 to 44 have also been hit hard by the virus that is spread through contaminated blood, and the prevalence of HCV infection among women giving birth has nearly doubled.
Those staggering details were revealed earlier this week when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a draft recommendation that calls on clinicians to screen all adults 18 to 79 years old for the virus, even those with no symptoms or known liver disease.
The opioid epidemic has fueled what is now the most common chronic bloodborne pathogen, said Stanford Health Policy’s Douglas Owens, MD, chair of the independent, voluntary panel of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine.
The Task Force, which makes recommendations followed by primary care clinicians nationwide, has until now recommended hepatitis C testing for people who are at high risk, as well as baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965.
“Unfortunately, HCV now affects a broader age range than previously with three times as many new infections per year,” said Owens.
