Why do baby boomers have hepatitis c

The Centers for Disease Control estimates the 3. In addition to the number of baby boomers who have the disease, the percentage of that same population being screened for hepatitis C is low. Hepatitis C is a disease of the liver that is spread through blood and bodily fluids. It is currently most commonly associated with injection drug use, but can also be spread through needle sticks in healthcare settings or be passed from mother to baby at birth.

While the disease can be asymptomatic, it presents with a variety of symptoms in approximately 20 to 30 percent of newly infected patients. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, pain in the abdomen, vomiting, lack of appetite, joint pain, jaundice, or discolored urine or stool. Hepatitis C mainly affects your liver, presenting with chronic inflammation of the organ. Although it directly affects your liver, the effects of the disease present throughout your body.

By the time symptoms finally do appear, the liver is often already harmed. HCV can be very serious. If left untreated, chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver cirrhosis. It can also lead to liver cancer or liver failure. People with liver failure might need a new liver. This is why HCV is the 1 cause of liver transplants. Doctors treat HCV with antiviral drugs.

If taken early, they can help keep the infection from becoming chronic. They can also help prevent liver damage. If taken later, they can help stop liver damage from getting worse. Most often, they can even cure the infection. Newer drugs, called direct-acting agents DAAs , are more effective. But over the years, the virus can do serious damage to the liver.

So knowing you are infected is the first step to getting treatment that could delay or prevent liver damage. Most people with HCV have no symptoms.

They can be infected for years or even decades before symptoms show up. Baby boomers are five times more likely to have the hepatitis C virus, according to the U. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At that point, life-threatening liver disease, including cirrhosis and liver cancer, has begun. Hepatitis refers to inflammation of the liver.

There are a handful of viral hepatitis types A, B, C, and E , but hepatitis C is the cause of the majority of serious liver disease in the United States.

There is no vaccine to prevent hepatitis C, which makes early detection so important. The majority of people with chronic hepatitis C are from the baby boom generation. This was most likely due to several factors. For example, sterilization techniques for common surgical procedures were not as advanced as they are today.

Yes, and treatment has changed remarkably in the past four years.