BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS study finds many baby boomers could have contracted virus in childhood, urges testing.
British Columbia researchers have shattered the prevailing stigma that most baby boomers diagnosed with hepatitis C contracted it via risky behaviour.
Dr. Julio Montaner and his team at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS partnered with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out why 75 per cent of the 4.6 million adults infected with virus in North America were born between 1945 and 1964.
“The theory was that in North America the Hepatitis C epidemic in baby boomers was due to some behavioural indiscretions that generation had in their younger years,” said Montaner, referring to injections drug use, needle sharing and risky sexual encounters. “That understanding led to the significant development of stigma around Hep C.”
But by tracking the history of the epidemic and studying virus sequences in more than 45,000 records, researchers believe they’ve put that stigma to an end.
Their findings, published Wednesday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, could have greater and more wide-ranging implications.
Analyses show that the hepatitis C epidemic was at its height between 1940 and 1965, 15 years earlier than previously believed.
The exponential growth of the epidemic soon subsided after that period.
That means many baby boomers that contracted the disease could have been exposed to it in childhood, and not during their late-teens or early-20s.