Baby boomers often unaware they need hepatitis C screening

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(Reuters Health) – Many baby boomers may be unaware they need screening for the hepatitis C virus, a small study suggests.

In a survey of 81 emergency room patients born during the “baby boom” from 1945 to 1965, only 29 percent of participants knew their risk for the virus was higher than for people born in earlier or later generations, the study found.

“Baby boomers are five times more likely to have hepatitis C than those groups born before or after this period,” said senior study author Dr. Ellie Carmody, an infectious disease researcher at New York University School of Medicine.

Hepatitis C is usually spread when blood from an infected person enters the body of someone who isn’t infected. These days, most people infected with the virus get it from sharing needles or equipment to inject drugs, but it can also be transmitted during sex, and until a test for it was developed in the early 1990s, people could acquire hepatitis C through blood transfusions.

“Because hepatitis C does not cause symptoms until many years after the original infection, baby boomers may have been infected decades ago and be unaware of their infection,” Carmody added by email. “The longer people live with chronic hepatitis C, the more likely they are to develop complications.”

To see how well baby boomers understand the virus, Carmody and colleagues asked a sampling of patients treated at one New York Hospital to complete brief surveys quizzing them about the virus.