Hepatitis C risk factors
|
Hepatitis C |
|
Diagnosis |
|
Treatment |
|
Hepatitis C risk factors On the Web |
|
American Roentgen Ray Society Images of Hepatitis C risk factors |
|
Risk calculators and risk factors for Hepatitis C risk factors |
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Assistant Editor-In-Chief: Nina Axiotakis [2]
Risk Factors
- Intravenous drug users (IVDU)
- Blood transfusion before 1990
- Current transfusion-associated risk: < 1/100,000
- Comparative risks: Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) 1/63,000, HIV 1/493,000
- Residual risk due to recently infected donors (10 week window)
- Percutaneous exposures
- Needle stick transmission: ~3% HCV, 30% HBV, 0.3% HIV
- Lesser Risk Factors
- High-risk sexual behavior
- Low socioeconomic status (unclear mechanisms)
- Sexual transmission inefficient
- HIV coinfection increases sexual and maternal-fetal transmission
- Risk Factors For Progression
- EtOH use
- HIV or HBV coinfection
- Older age at infection, male sex
- Number of new infections per year has declined from an average of 240,000 in the 1980s to about 26,000 in 2004.
- Most infections are due to illegal injection drug use.
- Transfusion-associated cases occurred prior to blood donor screening; now occurs in less than one per 2 million transfused units of blood.
- Estimated 4.1 million (1.6%) Americans have been infected with HCV, of whom 3.2 million are chronically infected.
- The risk for perinatal HCV transmission is about 4%
- If coinfected with HIV the risk for perinatal infection is about 19%