Hepatitis C Epidemic Highlights State’s Drug Use Problem

The number of new, acute cases of hepatitis C in Indiana has increased tenfold since 2008. Like many other health epidemics, the spike points to the state’s ongoing drug use problems.
People can only get acute cases of hepatitis C within the first six months of contracting the virus. Because people can have hep-C for decades, acute rates are a way public health officials can distinguish new cases from long-term, chronic ones.
State data says acute cases have increased steadily between 2008, when there were 13, and 2013, when there were 140, before a slight dip in 2014.
Data from last year is still provisional, but health officials say the number is expected to increase again.
IU Professor Beth Meyerson serves as co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS and STD Prevention. She says acute hepatitis C rate increases are usually attributable to one big culprit: injection drugs.
“Of course for acute Hepatitis C or Hepatitis C generally, we’re talking about blood infection,” Meyerson says.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention names injection drug use as the most common means of hepatitis C transmission in the U.S.
Overdose deaths—what Meyerson calls a surrogate indicator for drug use—have also increased along with acute hepatitis cases.