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Hiding in the shadow of the opioid epidemic is another troubling public health crisis, the precipitous increase in people whose liver is infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). But there is another problem: HCV infection during pregnancy
About half of these young people who are injecting drugs are women of childbearing age. And although sexual transmission or transmission of HCV from infected household items is rare, it can happen. And women whose partners inject drugs are also at risk for exposure.
A pregnant woman can pass the hepatitis C virus to her baby. It is not exactly clear at what point in pregnancy HCV transmission occurs, but there is some evidence to suggest it is more likely to occur close to the onset of labor or actually during labor and delivery. This is known as vertical transmission. Luckily vertical transmission of HCV is relatively uncommon, with 6 out of 100 babies born to HCV-infected mothers ultimately testing positive for HCV.
That said, in a recent article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers from the CDC reported that cases of HCV “essentially doubled among reproductive-aged women between 2006 and 2014, from 15,550 to 31,039.” They went on to compare rates of HCV in pregnant women and anticipated new cases in children to actual reported cases of HCV in children. The results suggest that there are likely a lot of children who have the hepatitis C virus but no symptoms. The authors conclude that these results should spur thinking about whether it might be appropriate to screen children for HCV and if so, which children and when?
Read more…http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/hepatitis-c-and-women-of-childbearing-age-2017070311952