Health scare of the week: Hepatitis C targets boomers

last updated 8 January 2015

More Americans die every year from hepatitis C infections than from AIDS, and three quarters of the victims are between the ages of 45 and 64, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. “One of every 33 baby boomers is living with hepatitis C,” John Ward, the CDC’s hepatitis chief, tells the Associated Press. More than half of them don’t know they have the disease and don’t seek treatment, creating “a silent epidemic.” Baby boomers are most at risk because the disease spreads when drug users share needles—a practice that was common in the 1960s and ’70s. Blood donors weren’t screened for the infection before 1992, allowing it to spread through transfusions. Hepatitis C targets the liver, where it can cause cirrhosis and cancer. But its symptoms—including fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and yellowing of the eyes and skin—often take decades to appear, leaving it to do serious damage unchecked. The disease’s current annual death toll of roughly 15,000 Americans per year will nearly triple over the next 20 years as infected boomers age, Ward says, “unless we do something different” to locate and treat the 3.2 million people who are now harboring the disease.