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HEALTH & SCIENCEAction, early identification urgent as hepatitis C spreadsAs effective treatments are found, educating patients about HCV becomes more important, says an NIH panel that examined the increased incidence of the disease.By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 1, 2002. Washington -- Physicians are being urged to educate their patients about hepatitis C infection, which many may have unknowingly acquired from intravenous drug use or from contaminated blood or blood products received before widespread screening for the virus began in the early 1990s. This advice comes from a panel of internists, gastroenterologists, infectious disease specialists, pediatricians and oncologists that met at the National Institutes of Health to hear testimony on hepatitis C and to draft a consensus statement on the next steps to take to combat the disease. The meeting was held June 10-12. The need for action is urgent, according to the panel, because a fourfold increase in the number of cases of chronic hepatitis C infection is expected over the next decade. "Hepatitis C is assuming epidemic proportions," warned James L. Boyer, MD, chair of the NIH consensus conference panel and director of Yale University School of Medicine's Liver Center. "It's estimated that more than 4 million people have been exposed to this virus in the past few years," he said. "However, the good news is that new combination therapies are having a beneficial impact on this disease," said Dr. Boyer. "In addition, preliminary research indicates that this approach may prove useful in treating important subgroups of patients, including children and injection drug users previously ineligible for treatment." Most liver specialists would agree that primary care physicians should ask their patients about risk factors for infection with HCV, the virus that causes hepatitis C, said Jeffrey Crippin, MD, associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. [...] Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2002 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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