Hep C Deaths > HIV Deaths in Americans
“More Americans now die from hepatitis C infection than from HIV, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The rate of HIV deaths has been falling while the rate for hepatitis C has been rising and the two curves crossed each other in 2007, according to Kathleen Ly, MPH, and colleagues.
In that year, they wrote in the Feb. 21 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, 12,734 deaths were blamed on HIV, compared with 15,106 attributed to hepatitis C.
The analysis, based on death certificates from 1999 through 2007, also showed that the death rate for hepatitis B has been falling slightly, although it was the underlying or contributing cause of 1,815 deaths in 2007.
The figures probably represent “only a fraction of a larger burden of morbidity and mortality from viral hepatitis,” Ly and colleagues argued, noting that chronic hepatitis infection — both B and C — is most prevalent among people born from 1945 through 1965.
Most of those with the disease do not know they are infected and they are now reaching the age where they are at risk for hepatitis-related diseases and death, they noted.
Indeed, in 2007, 73.4% of hepatitis C-related deaths were among people ages 45 through 64, while 59.4% of hepatitis B-related deaths occurred in that age group, they found.”
http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/GeneralInfectiousDisease/31272
