CDC Celebrates Hepatitis Awareness Month

Dear Colleagues,

Throughout each May, CDC celebrates Hepatitis Awareness Month to bring attention to viral hepatitis. This year, CDC's efforts have focused on three weekly themes to illustrate the importance of reaching key populations in high impact settings, protecting young families and pregnant persons, and accelerating hepatitis C point-of-care testing to expand test-to-cure. Each week, CDC highlighted recent successes and future opportunities, focused on the hope connected to the variety of tools we have at our disposal, and what we've already accomplished through these efforts.

Millions of people have viral hepatitis in the United States with more than 85,000 new viral hepatitis infections occurring in 2022 alone. Hepatitis C accounts for the largest burden of viral hepatitis in the United States. A recent CDC-funded analysis estimates that more than 2.4 million, and potentially as many as 4 million, adults in the United States had hepatitis C during 2017-2020. The analysis updates and builds upon previous estimates by including groups known to have high hepatitis C prevalence. Despite nearly a decade since breakthrough curative treatments were first approved, hepatitis C prevalence is unchanged and, based on new methodology accounting for heavily impacted populations, may be higher than previously reported.

These data make clear the importance of reaching key populations in settings they frequent and trust to ensure our most effective tools are reaching all populations. We must strengthen and expand our efforts to provide viral hepatitis prevention, testing, and treatment services in settings serving populations disproportionately impacted by hepatitis C, including substance use disorder treatment clinics, syringe services program, and carceral settings. Further, we can use data in new ways to identify gaps in viral hepatitis elimination efforts to motivate public health action to achieve national elimination goals. For example, state-specific hepatitis C clearance cascades can help states to monitor their efforts to implement best practices for preventing, diagnosing, and treating hepatitis C, including improving methods for testing and linkage to treatment for hepatitis. To support single-visit HCV diagnosis CDC streamlined its HCV testing guidance to ensure diagnosis of current infection is conducted on specimens collected during a single visit. And the availability of hepatitis C point-of-care testing to diagnose current infection is on the horizon and will facilitate same-day testing and treatment. A recent CDC-supported journal supplement brings together the latest science for improving hepatitis C diagnostics to help advance hepatitis C elimination in the United States.

To protect young families, CDC recommends screening all pregnant people for hepatitis B and hepatitis C to ensure everyone infected can be treated or cured. Testing during every pregnancy ensures infection is identified and steps can be taken to prevent mother-to-child transmission. As previously mentioned in a commentary in Pediatrics, we can also leverage this existing infrastructure to reduce HCV infection among pregnant persons and their infants. Rates of new acute hepatitis C in the United States more than tripled among reproductive-aged persons during 2010—2021, leading to an increased risk for children to acquire hepatitis C during pregnancy or delivery. Hepatitis C is curable; diagnosis is the first step. Unfortunately, according to a recent estimate fewer than 1 in 3 children perinatally exposed to hepatitis C are tested. Perinatally exposed infants should be tested at age 2–6 months using a NAT for HCV RNA.

CDC echoes the White House's call on National Hepatitis Testing Day to join in activities to increase awareness, prevention, and treatment of viral hepatitis. We have many promising, evidence-based tools, but these tools are ineffective without innovative efforts to put them into practice. We encourage you to continue to creatively and effectively implement all available strategies to prevent and control viral hepatitis.

Thank you for continued partnership and hard work to prevent viral hepatitis infections, protect health, and save lives, and for joining CDC and partners nationwide to bring awareness to the immense needs and opportunities to accelerate efforts to prevent and control viral hepatitis in the United States.

Sincerely,

/Carolyn Wester/

Carolyn Wester, MD
Director
Division of Viral Hepatitis
National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/

/Jonathan Mermin/

Jonathan Mermin, MD, MPH
Rear Admiral, USPHS (retired)
Director
National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Stay connected @DrMerminCDC and Connections