Test Baby Boomers for Hepatitis C, Says CDC
Steven Reinberg
HealthDay
via Yahoo! News
5/18/2012
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants all Americans born between 1945 and 1965 — the baby boom generation — tested for hepatitis C.
Most cases of the potentially deadly disease occur in this age group, and most were infected in their teens and 20s and don’t know they are infected, the agency said.
“CDC views this as an unrecognized health crisis and we needed to take a bold action because current strategies weren’t working,” said Dr. John Ward, director of the division of viral hepatitis at CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.
“The recommendation is for a one-time hepatitis C virus test for all persons born between 1945 and 1965,” Ward said.
Deaths from the virus topped 15,000 in 2007, according to the CDC.
“The great majority of people — 75 percent — of the 3.2 million Americans living with hepatitis C are in the so-called baby boom generation,” Ward noted.
Baby boomers have a rate of infection about five times higher than others because they were young adults before the cause of hepatitis C was discovered in 1989, he explained…
The article continues at Yahoo! News.
