Is it true that there is a high risk of death if one contracts Hepatitis A after they contract Hepatitis C? If so, you'd think there ought to be more noise about this in health publications and also in the media.
-
Are you sure you mean hepatitis A and C? All I can find is on B and C (or C and HIV)– YviDeMar 18, 2016 at 17:31
-
Hepatitis A clearly exists and shows up in Google searches, so I'm guessing you're talking about Google hits with respect to searches involving complications of two diseases. And I agree - there seems to be nothing online about it! The original source and basis for my question is House M.D., season 6 or 7. The entire cast agrees that, given a patient who has Hepatitis C, if they infect him with Hepatitis A, there is a 15% it will cure him outright, but an 85% chance it will kill him. The entire cast went along with this plot point.– user11077Mar 24, 2016 at 20:45
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
In Fulminant Hepatitis Associated with Hepatitis A Virus Superinfection in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C, out of 17 patients with chronic hepatitis C infection who also got infected with hepatitis A, 6 died, so about one third.
In an Italian population based study, 77 patients with chronic hepatitis C (52 with hepatitis C, 25 with hepatitis C and hepatitis B) also got infected with hepatitis A. None died from the hepatitis A infection. This is a published letter to the journal the first study appeared in - the researchers from Italy wrote in because they were surprised by the high mortality rate in the US study, as they had seen no such correlation.
Hepatitis A virus vaccination in persons with hepatitis C virus infection: consequences of quality measure implementation pooled data from 10 studies and puts the mortality rate for hepatitis C patients with a hepatitis A superinfection at around 7 percent (95 percent confidence interval: 1.24-42.12)
That figure of 85 percent dying that the TV show House MD mentioned is made up.
Vaccination against hepatitis A is recommended for chronic hepatitis C patients by
- the World Health Organization
- the CDC
- and the NHS
-
1I am willing to believe the statistics were made up on House M.D. My question, though, was whether there is a high risk of death when one contracts HepA after they contracted HepC. You first study has a mortality rate of 35%! The third has it as 7%. So perhaps it's not high", but instead startling. So I'd say, whatever it is, it sounds like it's more than enough to start publicizing this more! And I also think there's no question - you have provided very good source material! Mar 25, 2016 at 3:13