U.S. hepatitis C burden may ease in coming decades: study

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Hepatitis C may become a “rare” disease in the U.S. in about 20 years, according to a new computer model. About one in 100 people are currently infected with the hepatitis C virus in the U.S. but that may drop to about one in 1,500 people by 2036 thanks to new medicines and increased screening regimens, researchers suggest. “We were pleasantly surprised that in the next 22 years we could make this a rare disease,” said Jagpreet Chhatwal, the study’s senior author from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Hepatitis C is a viral infection of the liver that is typically transmitted when the blood of an infected person enters the body of a healthy person.