Hepatitis C
What is Hepatitis C?
Hepatitis C is a dangerous virus that makes your liver victim of sickness. Excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, certain chemicals and some other viruses can also cause liver disease.
Your liver is very important to your health. When the liver is hurt or damaged, it doesn't work properly and makes you sick.
Hepatitis C is sometimes called "Hep C."
How do you suffer from hepatitis C?
You can get hepatitis C when the blood of someone who has the hepatitis C virus passes into your bloodstream. Even if the blood droplets are too small to be seen, you can still get hepatitis C.
High risk activities
Sharing drugs with needles, syringes, and teaspoons is the most common way people get hepatitis C.
Tattooing, body piercing or similar procedures in traditional ceremonies with sterilized instruments
Procedures in which the skin is pierced with sterile medical, dental or acupuncture needles
Low-risk activities
A mother who has hepatitis C can pass it on to her baby during pregnancy or birth
By using a toothbrush and razor together
Accidental needle stick exposure to health care workers
You cannot get hepatitis C from:
By sharing toilets or showers
From sweating or washing the clothes of someone who has hepatitis C
Using knives, forks, plates or a combination of cups and glasses
Eating food prepared by someone who has hepatitis C
By sneezing, coughing, kissing or hugging
From swimming pools
Animal or insect bites (eg mosquitoes).
Vaccinations, blood transfusions and different types of medical and dental procedures are safe in different countries when all rules and regulations are implemented.
How do I know if I have hepatitis C?
Most people neither look nor feel sick. The most common symptom is nausea. The only accurate method to know all about this disorder is a blood test.
Symptoms of hepatitis C
Long-term infection with the hepatitis C virus is known as jaundice. Chronic hepatitis is usually a "silent" infection for many years, until the virus can damage the liver enough to cause symptoms of liver disease.
Symptoms include:
Bleeding easily
Hurt easily
Fatigue
Do not feel hungry
Yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice)
Dark colored urine
Itchy skin
Accumulation of fluid in the stomach
Swelling in the legs
Weight loss
Confusion, drowsiness
Spider-like blood vessels on your pores and skin (spider angiomas)
Each chronic hepatitis C infection starts with an acute level. Acute hepatitis C is usually undetected because it rarely causes some of the symptoms. Symptoms, if present, may include fatigue, nausea, fever, and muscle aches along with jaundice. Acute signs appear 30 to 90 days after exposure to the virus and final two weeks to ninety days.
Acute jaundice infection is not always chronic. Some people beat it out of their bodies after the acute phase, a result known as viral clearance.
When should I get tested?
Ask your doctor for a test if:
Health care and emergency workers who may have been exposed to blood or an accidental needle stick.
People with hemophilia who had been treated treated with the help of clotting factors before 1987.
People who have undergone long-term hemodialysis treatment.
Tests for babies born to mothers with jaundice
Anyone with inconclusive liver function test results
You have ever had a drug injection, even if it was not long ago. (Drugs include steroids for the gym)
Have you ever been in a prison in any country?
You donated an organ or blood in Australia before 1990 or in a country when hepatitis C testing was not introduced
You have a tattoo or a skin piercing
You have come from a place where hepatitis C is more common, such as Africa, the Middle East (especially Egypt), Mediterranean countries, Eastern Europe, and South Asia.
Your mother has hepatitis C
You are a man who has HIV and you have sex with another man
Your sexual partner has hepatitis C
People with HIV infection
Anyone born from 1945 to 1965.
Hepatitis C screening
The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all adults between the ages of 18 and 79 be screened for hepatitis C, even if they have no symptoms or obvious effects of liver disease.
Other blood tests
If the initial blood test shows that you have hepatitis C, additional blood tests will be done
Measuring the amount of hepatitis C virus in the blood (viral load)
Identification of the genotype of the virus
Liver damage tests
Doctors usually use one or more of the following tests to assess liver damage in chronic hepatitis or jaundice.
Magnetic resonance is an alternative to liver biopsy, MRI, which combines magnetic resonance imaging technology and creates a visual map of the entire liver using sound waves bouncing off the liver. are Hardened liver tissue indicates the presence of liver scarring (fibrosis) as a result of chronic hepatitis C.
Elastography
Another test, transient elastography, is a type of ultrasound that transmits vibrations to the liver and measures the speed of their propagation through the liver tissue to assess its stiffness.
Liver biopsy
Usually done using ultrasound guidance, the test involves inserting a thin needle into the abdominal wall to remove a small sample of liver tissue for laboratory testing.
Series of blood tests
A series of blood tests can indicate the extent of fibrosis, or liver scarring, in your liver.
What effect hepatitis C virus have on my body?
The hepatitis C virus enters liver cells and multiplies within them. The body fights the virus in the liver cells and this fight can damage the liver. Sometimes your body fights the virus on its own and gets rid of all the viruses. This can happen within six months of the virus entering the body.
Most people's bodies cannot fight off all viruses. Over the years, the liver becomes very damaged and has many scars. This is called 'cirrhosis' and can lead to liver cancer and liver dysfunction.
Is hepatitis C treatable or curable?
Yes, your physician may provide you medicine to treat hepatitis C.
Do I need to tell anyone that I have hepatitis C?
By law you must tell these people:
If you give donation of blood at any blood bank
If you donate a body organ (eg kidney) or a body fluid (eg semen)
Some insurance companies may ask you to confirm that you do not have hepatitis C or any other disease. If you don't tell us, the company may not pay you at the time of the claim.
If you want to join the Australian Defense Force (ADF) you must tell them.
If you are a medical worker who performs medical tasks where your hands cannot be seen (such as a surgeon or doctor), you must tell your employer or supervisor and seek specialist doctor's advice.
You don't need to tell them:
To the boss
To work colleagues or classmates
To the family
To friends
Your doctor may not tell your family.
How can I protect myself from hepatitis C?
Do not share needles, syringes, spoons to take drugs
Choose a tattoo and skin piercing studio carefully. Use licensed professionals. Make sure they use a new needle and ink for each customer
Always use a condom if you have more than one sex partners, especially if you are such a person who have sex with the person suffering from hepatitis C.
Avoid receiving blood and blood products in countries that do not test blood donations
Do not share toothbrushes and razors
If you are a healthcare worker, always give priority to standard precautionary measures and follow them in each case
If you had hepatitis C in the past and were cured with medication, you can still get hepatitis C again.
Treatment
Hepatitis C is a viral infection that causes inflammation of the liver, and sometimes severe liver damage. The virus is spread through contaminated blood. Until recently, treatment for hepatitis C required weekly injections and oral medications that many infected people did not take because of other health problems or unacceptable side effects.
But now, chronic HCV is usually treatable with oral medications taken every day for two to six months. About half of people with HCV don't know they're infected, mainly because Because they have no obvious symptoms, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all adults between the ages of 18 and 79 must be screened for hepatitis C.
Even if the symptoms are not obvious in them. The group most at risk includes anyone born between 1945 and 1965 – a population that is five times more likely to be affected than those born in other years.
Where can I get help and advice?
There are many Hepatitis C groups in each country that can give you help, advice and support.
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