Hepatitis C often has no symptoms and can be mistaken for other diseases. Early symptoms include fever, nausea, and abdominal pain, while later symptoms can include liver failure. Those who have used shared needles or received blood transfusions prior to 1987 should be tested.
Hepatitis C (HCV) is often asymptomatic, which means that many individuals who have it are not even aware of it. When symptoms do appear, they are usually vague and can easily be mistaken for other diseases. The most common early symptoms of hepatitis C are low-grade fever, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, body aches, headache, and diarrhea. Eventually these symptoms may evolve into more serious indications such as coffee-colored urine and clay-like stools. The last and most serious symptom is usually liver failure.
There are an estimated 36,000 new cases of hepatitis C each year in the United States. Up to 80% of all people who have shared needles while doing recreational drugs may be infected. Most of these people don’t even know they are a carrier of the disease because hepatitis C symptoms often don’t appear until the disease has progressed, and some carriers never experience any symptoms until failure occurs. hepatic.
In the early stages, the symptoms of hepatitis C are usually vague because it is commonly associated with a wide range of diseases. Many times these symptoms do not progress in intensity and some patients still go untested for hepatitis. The first signs that many people notice as “dull” are dark brown urine, yellowing of the skin or eyes, and clay-like stools.
Some patients are not diagnosed with hepatitis C until it has progressed and liver disease has developed. Whenever liver inflammation occurs, the patient is tested for hepatitis C. Many patients do not survive when the disease is contracted so late.
Because hepatitis C symptoms often go undetected, those who used illegal drugs using shared needles should be tested, as well as those who received blood transfusions prior to 1987. Occasionally blood transfusions can still spread the HCV, but this is very rare. Anyone who later learns that they have received blood from an infected donor should be tested immediately. Typically, patients who have elevated liver enzymes and other symptoms of liver distress will be tested automatically as part of routine testing.
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