Hepatitis C Kills More Americans Than HIV/AIDS

Virus can be carried for decades before often-fatal liver disease develops

February 27, 2012

The number of deaths from the hepatitis C virus is up while deaths related to HIV/AIDS are down, according to U.S. researchers. As a result, more Americans are now dying from hepatitis C than from HIV/AIDS.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used death certificates to track fatal cases of three viral infections - hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS - over almost a decade, starting in 1999.

Over nine years, HIV deaths steadily decreased as prevention programs took effect and better treatment became available. At the same time, hepatitis C cases climbed, and by 2007, more Americans were dying from that virus than from the one that causes AIDS.

Hepatitis B deaths were relatively steady during the study period, and they accounted for a fraction of the deaths caused by the other two viruses.

Co-author John Ward, director of the CDC hepatitis division, says the uptick in hepatitis C deaths doesn't indicate more people are becoming infected.

"The number of deaths from hepatitis C [is] increasing," he says, "because the persons infected with this virus are aging into a period of their lives when they're becoming sick with liver cirrhosis or liver cancer caused by this viral infection."

Hepatitis C was discovered in 1989, and Ward says most of the three million Americans who are infected with it were exposed before then - for example through contaminated blood transfusions or by injecting illicit drugs.