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The following text is from an archived Red Book® edition and may not reflect current recommendations or information. To view the current edition, click here.

The first 300 words of the full text of this section appear below.

Section 3. Summaries of Infectious Diseases

Hepatitis C

Clinical Manifestations
Etiology
Epidemiology
Diagnostic Tests
Treatment
Isolation of the Hospitalized Patient
Control Measures

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CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS: Signs and symptoms of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are indistinguishable from those of hepatitis A or hepatitis B virus infections. Acute disease tends to be mild and insidious in onset, and most infections are asymptomatic. Jaundice occurs in <20% of patients, and abnormalities in liver function tests generally are less pronounced than abnormalities in patients with hepatitis B virus infection. Persistent infection with HCV occurs in 50% to 60% of infected children, even in the absence of biochemical evidence of liver disease. Most children with chronic infection are asymptomatic. Although chronic hepatitis develops in approximately 60% to 70% of infected adults, limited data indicate that chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis are less common in children. Infection with HCV is the leading reason for liver transplantation among adults in the United States.


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ETIOLOGY: Hepatitis C virus is a small, single-stranded RNA virus and is a member of the Flavivirus family. Multiple HCV genotypes and subtypes exist.


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EPIDEMIOLOGY: The prevalence of HCV infection in the general population of the United States is estimated at 1.8%. The seroprevalence is 0.2% for children younger than 12 years of age and 0.4% for adolescents 12 to 19 years of age. Seroprevalences vary among populations according to their associated risk factors.

Infection is spread primarily by parenteral exposure to blood of HCV-infected people. The current risk of HCV infection after blood transfusion in the United States is estimated to be less than 1 in 1 million units transfused because of exclusion of high-risk donors and of HCV-positive units by antibody testing and screening of pools of blood units by some form of nucleic acid amplification (NAA) test (see Blood Safety, p 106. . . [Go to Full Text]


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