Important note for all baby boomers: The U.S. Preventive
Services Task Force (USPSTF), which is a pretty conservative group in what it
thinks needs doing, has just come out with a recommendation that all baby
boomers be tested for hepatitis C (HCV).
Why now?
Because of "the strength of evidence on the benefits
of HCV testing linked to care, treatments, and improved health outcomes”
In other words, according to the USPSTF (and according to
most other experts, too), we have improved HCV therapy so much that it’s now
worth – from both a persona perspective and as a benefit to society in terms of
medical costs - finding it and treating it, thus significantly reducing the
complications of HCV, which include cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer and
liver failure.
And since the US CDC estimated that a couple of million
Americans are HCV positive and don’t know it (applying similar numbers to
Canada, which is probably accurate, would yield roughly 200,000 HCV Canadians
who don’t yet know they carry this virus), on top of which the majority of
those unknowing individuals are baby boomers, that’s the reason for this
recommendation.
So if you’re a boomer, and especially if you ever
experimented with IV drug use, even only once or twice, this is worth paying
attention to.
