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CDC pushes for testing of 80 million Americans

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This poster is among the public outreach offerings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of its campaign to have baby boomers tested for hepatitis C.Courtesy image

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While headlines earlier this summer focused on the hepatitis C outbreak for patients at Exeter Hospital who allegedly were injected by contaminated anesthetic syringes, another hepatitis C development was taking place on a national scale.

Beginning in August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out guidelines recommending that all members of the "baby boom" generation, an estimated 80 million Americans, get a one-time test for the hepatitis C virus. According to final CDC recommendations, one in 30 baby boomers ? the generation born from 1945 to 1965 ? has been infected with hepatitis C, and most don't know it.

Hepatitis C causes serious liver diseases, including liver cancer, the fastest-rising cause of cancer-related deaths, and is the leading cause of liver transplants in the United States.

"This is quite a big deal," said Dr. Bryce Smith, lead health scientist in CDC's Division of Viral Hepatitis and the first author on the new hepatitis C testing recommendations. "Testing a population of 78 to 80 million people is not the kind of thing we easily recommend but we believe it's going to help immediately. We are in the rare situation of actually heading off a health crisis before it becomes much worse."

According to CDC guidelines, hepatitis C is transmitted only through blood, so anyone who received either a blood transfusion in the 1970s and 1980s or an organ transplant before 1992 is at increased risk. Health care workers exposed to blood and people who injected drugs through shared needles are also at increased risk. The virus can also be spread through microscopic amounts of infected blood that could occur during sex, from sharing a razor or toothbrush, or getting a tattoo or body piercing at an unsterile shop.

"There wasn't the universal precaution about blood and products then that we have now," Smith said.

Smith said the testing addition is simple and not costly. CDC is reaching out to public health agencies, hospital and physician affiliated groups to spread the word as far as possible.

Noreen Biehl, a spokeswoman for Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, said primary care physicians affiliated with the hospital are beginning to do hepatitis C at-risk assessment of all patients and determining which ones to target test.

"They are actively reviewing CDC recommendations," Biehl said.

Risk-based screening will continue to be important, Smith said, but the increased testing recommendations are necessary for the simple reason that many people infected with hepatitis C don't know they are infected. The CDC study that promoted the guidelines estimated that more than 2 million U.S. baby boomers are infected with hepatitis C ? accounting for more than 75 percent of all American adults living with the virus.

Studies show many baby boomers were infected with the virus decades ago, do not perceive themselves to be at risk because they have no symptoms, and have never been screened.

Smith said researchers began to realize the baby boomer cohort was a target group as far back as 2006 when liver-related disease reports began to skyrocket. More than 15,000 Americans, most of them baby boomers, die each year from hepatitis C-related illness, such as cirrhosis and liver cancer. The number of deaths doubled from 1999 to 2007 and has continued to grow since then.

Smith is optimistic that early testing will make a significant difference. The CDC estimates one-time hepatitis C testing of baby boomers could identify more than 800,000 additional people with hepatitis C and that early testing could save more than 120,000 lives. The CDC believes with newly available therapies that can cure up to 75 percent of infections, expanded testing ? along with linkage to appropriate care and treatment ? would prevent the costly consequences of liver cancer and other chronic liver diseases.

Hepatitis C

For more information on testing recommendations, visit www.cdc.gov/features/HepatitisCTesting/index.html.

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Source: http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20121021-LIFE-210210327

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