CDC Urges ‘Boomers’ to Get Tested for Hep C Infection

Posted on May 19, 2012

{Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Did you know? May 19 is “National Hepatitis Testing Day” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all baby boomers, the group believed to account for 75 percent of hepatitis C infections in the United States, get checked.

Early diagnosis and treatment can reduce the consequences of the disease. New treatments can cure up to 75 percent of infections, the agency says.

Vietnam-era veterans are considered a high-risk group due to blood exposure in military hospitals and drug use. —ARK

MedPage Today:

The CDC estimates that some two million Americans born from 1945 to 1965 are infected with HCV—that’s about 3% of the boomer generation. But because many years usually elapse before noticeable symptoms develop, most don’t know they are infected.

The CDC said one-time HCV testing of all “baby boomers” “could identify more than 800,000 additional people with hepatitis C, prevent the costly consequences of liver cancer and other chronic liver diseases, and save more than 120,000 lives.”

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