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Hepatitis C: An Epidemic Ignored? What Is Hepatitis B? ABCs of Hepatitis

Liver Health

Hepatitis C: Are You a Silent Carrier?

Summary & Participants

Hepatitis C is called a silent epidemic because many people are unaware they carry this virus of the liver. But experts say hepatitis C is a public health threat on par with HIV.

Medically Reviewed On: July 05, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Hepatitis C is often referred to as a "silent epidemic". It is largely overlooked by the general public, although many physicians and sufferers of hepatitis C view the virus as a public health threat on par with HIV.

EMMET KEEFFE, MD: The total amount of people in the US that have hepatitis C is about 4 million individuals.

ANNOUNCER: Hepatitis C can present in individuals in two ways. A few days after being infected, a patient may experience an acute, or short-term, illness with flu-like symptoms that usually goes away by itself.

EMMET KEEFFE, MD: Now, some patients will have some subtle symptoms of fatigue or easy tiredness or some mild aching, but those are quite nonspecific symptoms and don't usually lead them to seek out their physician or their health care provider. So many are asymptomatic.

ANNOUNCER: An acute hepatitis C infection may progress into a chronic, or long-term, infection. Patients often have no symptoms and are unaware that they carry the virus.

EMMET KEEFFE, MD: We don't see very much acute hepatitis C. Chronic hepatitis C is far more common. In fact, there was a recent survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control that showed that 1.8 percent of the adult population have an antibody to hepatitis C. That's huge. That means nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population at some time has been exposed to that virus.

ANNOUNCER: The hepatitis C virus is found in blood and certain body fluids and can be commonly spread in a number of ways.

EMMET KEEFFE, MD: If you had blood transfusions before 1990, you're at risk that you have acquired hepatitis C. If you ever used IV drugs, even on a few occasions as a young college student experiment, you may have picked up hepatitis C, and you also need to be tested.

Now, one of the peculiarities about hepatitis C that's different in terms of its spread compared to hepatitis B is that hepatitis C is not easily spread by sexual contact. So the CDC does not recommend that monogamous partners, husbands and wives or steady partners, need to change their sexual practices, because it's quite rare to have the virus be spread by that mode of contact.

ANNOUNCER: Hepatitis C can also often infect health care workers, through accidental needle sticks. People who live with an infected person and share personal items, such as razors or toothbrushes, are also at risk. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.

EMMET KEEFFE, MD: There's active research underway, but there's been a number of obstacles to vaccine development, because hepatitis C is a very tricky virus. There's a lot of mutations that occur, a lot of different flavors of the virus, if you will. So we don't have a vaccine for C.

ANNOUNCER: If a person does become infected, several treatments are available.

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