NASHVILLE – With Tennessee cases of acute Hepatitis C cases more than tripling from 2006 to 2012, the state Department of Health has issued a public health advisory urging residents to get up to speed on the deadly liver-destroying disease.
State Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner said the 364 percent rise of acute Hepatitis C in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia may only represent “the tip of the iceberg of a Hepatitis epidemic.”
Often associated with intravenous drug use and unsanitary instruments used in tatooing or piercing, the disease in both its forms — acute and chornic — is often spread by direct contact with blood from an infected person.
In a May 2015 report from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC says that over the seven-year period Tennessee and the other states reported a total of 1,377 cases of acute HCV infection to the federal agency.
Dreyzehner, a physician, meanwhile, is warning there could be huge numbers of Tennesseans with chronic Hepatitis C.