Hepatitis C is top infectious disease killer
Deaths related to hepatitis C infection are at an all-time high, exceeding mortality from 60 other infectious diseases – including HIV, tuberculosis, and pneumococcal disease – combined, the federal government reported Wednesday.
Preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 19,659 deaths associated with hepatitis C in 2014, up 78 percent from 2003. Most were among baby boomers, especially those between 55 and 64 years of age.
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that may not cause symptoms for years until chronic infection begins damaging the liver. It is the most common cause of liver cancer and liver transplants.
Most chronic cases leading to death date back to the period before a screening test for blood transfusions was developed in the early 1990s. The virus itself had been identified less than three decades earlier, although the virus is believed to have been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
Unlike those dying from hepatitis C-related conditions, most new infections are among young, white injection-drug users in rural and suburban areas of the Midwest and Eastern United States. New cases more than doubled since 2010, reaching 2,194, in 2014, the most recent data available, the CDC said.
Treatments that can effectively cure the virus with minimal side-effects have become available only within the last few years. But they are expensive, and some state Medicaid programs have balked at the cost.
CDC researchers published an analysis of the new surveillance data online Wednesday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Read more from the Check Up blog »