Acute Hepatitis C Infection

Hepatitis C is the main cause of chronic liver disease in many of countries, but since its discovery about 15 years ago through implantation of blood product screening there has been a constant decrease in the number of new cases of post transfusion acute hepatitis C (acute HCV). ^{1, 2, 3} This unfortunately did not translate to lower number of the end stage liver diseases caused by this virus and still in many countries it would be the most common indication of liver transplantation up to 2 more decades.^{5, 6, 7} Despite blood screening, post transfusion acute HCV still occurs worldwide although it is becoming very rare. Other sources of HCV acquisition are rising and acute HCV is now a well established occupational hazard as well as nosocomial infection.^{8, 9, 10}Although the total number of acute HCV infection has decreased in many communities; there is now a growing number acute HCV especially among intravenous drug abusers (IVDs) and those who had occupational or nosocomial infection.¹¹ There are some data indicating a good response of this group of acute HCV even to Interferon monotherapy, which is considered a suboptimal treatment in the cases of chronic HCV infection.¹²In this article the current data on acute HCV infection and its management would be reviewed. It is especially important to have a guideline on the management of acute HCV in each institution especially considering those who get this infection nosocomially. We hope this review would help in developing such guidelines.

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