Current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening are inadequate, according to a study conducted in an urban emergency department (ED).

A review of blood samples for nearly 5000 patients who were seen in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Emergency Department, Baltimore City, Maryland, during an 8-week period showed that the CDC screening recommendations miss up to a quarter of all cases. The authors argue that one-time universal screening is needed.

A huge job to identify those who don’t have a clue….yet….they are infected !
Quoting part of medscape article :- “We found high prevalence rates of HCV even in young adult patients, suggesting we need to expand testing beyond the baby boomer cohort,” said lead author Yu-Hsiang Hsieh, PhD, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, in a university press release. “Urban EDs should consider expanding CDC HCV testing recommendations to permit more robust identification of patients with unknown HCV status.”

Dr Hsieh and colleagues report their findings in an article that appears in the May issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The CDC recommends one-time HCV birth cohort testing in people born from 1945 to 1965, as well as risk-based testing in those considered to be at high risk for HCV infection, including people with HIV, history of drug injection use, hemodialysis, transfusion, transplant, or use of clotting factor concentrates; with recognized exposures at work; who were born to HCV-infected women; or with persistent abnormal alanine aminotransferase…”