Hepatitis C

What it is?

Hepatitis C is the most severe form of viral hepatitis, which is also called post-transfusion hepatitis. This means that they contracted it after a blood transfusion. Currently, all donated blood is necessarily tested for the hepatitis C virus. Quite often, infection occurs through syringes of drug addicts. Sexual transmission is possible, as well as from mother to fetus.

Why does this happen?

Here are the situations in which infection most often occurs:

1. Donor blood transfusion. Worldwide, on average, 0.01-2% of donors are carriers of hepatitis viruses, so currently donor blood is tested for the presence of hepatitis C viruses before transfusion to the recipient. The risk of infection increases in persons who require repeated transfusions of blood or its products.

2. Sharing the same needle by different people increases the risk of infection many times over. This is the most common route of infection with hepatitis C today.

3. Viruses can be transmitted through sexual contact, but the risk of transmitting hepatitis C virus through sexual contact is considered low.

4. The route of infection from mother to child (doctors call it “vertical”) is not observed so often. The risk increases if a woman has an active form of the virus or suffered acute hepatitis in the last months of pregnancy. The likelihood of infection of the fetus increases sharply if the mother, in addition to the hepatitis virus, has HIV infection. The hepatitis virus is not transmitted through mother's milk.

5. Hepatitis C viruses are transmitted through tattooing, acupuncture, and ear piercing with unsterile needles.

6. In 40% of cases, the source of infection remains unknown.

What happens?

After the incubation period, during which the virus multiplies and adapts in the body (2-26 weeks), the disease begins to manifest itself. At first, before the appearance of jaundice, hepatitis resembles the flu and begins with fever, headache, general malaise, and body aches. The onset is usually gradual, the rise in temperature is gradual.

In addition to a slight fever, the hepatitis B virus manifests itself as joint pain and sometimes skin rashes. After a few days, the picture begins to change: appetite disappears, pain appears in the right hypochondrium, nausea, vomiting, urine darkens and feces become discolored.

Doctors record an enlargement of the liver and, less often, the spleen. Changes characteristic of hepatitis are found in the blood: specific markers of viruses, bilirubin increases, liver tests increase 8-10 times. Usually, after the appearance of jaundice, the condition of patients improves. Gradually, over several weeks, the symptoms reverse. (If the disease does not enter the chronic stage).

Chronic hepatitis poses the greatest danger. The most characteristic signs of chronic hepatitis are malaise and increased fatigue towards the end of the day, and the inability to perform previous physical activities. These symptoms are not constant, which is why many people do not take the disease seriously.

Signs of hepatitis such as nausea, abdominal pain, joint and muscle pain, and stool upset can be caused by both the underlying disease and other diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Jaundice, dark urine, itching, bleeding, weight loss, enlarged liver and spleen, spider veins are detected only at an advanced stage of chronic viral hepatitis.

Another variant of the course of the disease is also possible: In the event that virus carriage is not diagnosed, a condition when the virus has been in the body for many years, and the person is the source of infection. In this case, the virus can directly act on liver cells, leading over time to liver tumors.

Diagnosis

To make a diagnosis of viral hepatitis C, the following basic laboratory and instrumental tests must be performed: