Hepatitis C is a virus that silently attacks your liver.Most of the people who are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) don’t experience any symptoms.
In fact, most of you don’t know that you have the liver disease.
Hepatitis C is the most serious of all the hepatitis viruses. Today, HCV is the most common reason for liver transplantation in adults.
About 300 million people around the world are suffering from hepatitis C virus.
Most common cause of hepatitis C transmission is through contact with blood infected with HCV. This is due to:
- Sharing the drug needles
- Working in a laboratory or a dialysis unit
- Using infected needles for tattoos or body piercing
- Having sex with an infected person
- Being born to a mother with hepatitis C
Though HCV damages your liver, you won’t experience any symptoms. Even you develop any symptoms, they are mild and they come and go for some period of time.
The symptoms of HCV are diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, jaundice, pain over liver, grayish or clay colored stools, and dark colored urine.
Researchers found that one third of patients with chronic hepatitis C can have symptoms that threaten their lives. Chronic hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis of the liver.
In this condition, your healthy liver tissues are replaced by fibrous tissues leaving a scar like hardening. Also, it is found that, cirrhosis occurs in one among three women and more than half can develop liver cancer also.
About 50% of the cirrhosis cases can cause loss of life and about 70% can develop chronic hepatitis. Studies showed that AIDS and hepatitis C are in 1:5 ratios, in which for every one AIDS case there are five hepatitis C cases.
To check for hepatitis C, your doctor will do a blood test or a liver biopsy, in which, your doctor removes tiny piece of liver for checking hepatitis C signs and liver damage.
For treating hepatitis C, a drug named as peginterferon is used in combination with ribavirin. You may also need surgery if you have hepatitis C for several years. After a while, your liver may stop working. If this is the case, you need a new liver.
This surgery is called as liver transplantation. Surgery involves, removing the old and damaged liver and putting a new and healthy liver from a donor.
Here are some suggestions to protect yourself from hepatitis C virus:
- Avoid sharing the needles with anyone
- Wear gloves if you need to touch anyone’s blood
- Don’t have unprotected sex
- Get body piercing or tattooing with clean tools
- Don’t use razor, toothbrush or anything that contain blood of an infected person
Hepatitis C really brings a lot of complications inside our body. It is better to prevent this disease in early stage to avoid some diseases that may occur. First, you have to test yourselves just by using elisakit that can detect a lot of subtances in your body and of course illnesses inside your system.
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