Can hepatitis C be caused by long alcohol abuse, or can it only be sexually transmitted?

Claudia

Hepatitis C is a viral infection that can damage the liver. It is caused by a virus, not by alcohol abuse. What can be confusing, however, is that as many as one-third of chronic alcoholics with cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) also have hepatitis C infection. The disease is probably so prevalent in these patients because alcoholics are more likely to develop cirrhosis if they also have hepatitis C infection.

Another cause of confusion is that in a significant minority of patients with hepatitis C, the route of infection is unknown. The usual source of infection is sexual contact or exposure to blood through accidental needle sticks or needle-sharing among drug abusers. (In the past, blood transfusion was the most common type of blood-borne transmission. Today it is relatively rare, because donated blood is tested for the virus before it is used.) A person can contract the virus through a single sexual act, but it is far more common that the patient has had many sexual exposures. Still, there are some people infected with hepatitis C who have never had contact with infected blood and have never had sex with an infected person.

It's important to note that there are a variety of tests for hepatitis C. If you have a positive result on the most commonly used test, called an ELISA, your doctor should confirm the results with a newer hepatitis C test called RIBA. Both look for antibodies against the virus in the blood, but the RIBA test uses a different method and is more accurate. An even newer, somewhat experimental test called PCR can detect the virus itself. This is probably the most accurate test, but it is not widely available.