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6/1/2005
While the rate of new cases of
hepatitis C has fallen in recent years, health professionals are bracing
for the impact of the disease among the millions who were infected
during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the Wall Street Journal reported May 31.
Many baby boomers don't even know they are carrying the virus, which can
lay dormant for many years before emerging with symptoms that include
jaundice, abdominal pain, and nausea. Hepatitis C is the leading cause
of liver disease and causes up to 10,000 deaths annually.
Sharing of contaminated needles by drug users, blood transfusions, and
unprotected sex can spread the virus; improved screening and
needle-exchange programs have cut the infection rate by 90 percent since
1989.
But that's too late for many unwitting carriers -- many of them
middle-aged, white, well-off professionals. As a result, the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects the hepatitis C
infection rate to triple over the next decade. "The majority of my
patients experimented with drugs during the '60s and '70s and now work
on Wall Street," said Robert S. Brown Jr., medical director for the
Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at New York Presbyterian
Hospital.
About four million Americans are suspected of having the hepatitis C
virus. Drug treatment has improved, and about 20 percent of victims can
eliminate the virus with treatment.
Source:
Join Together
Online.
Join Together is a project of the
Boston University School of Public Health |
