Hepatitis - Highlights

Highlights

Risk Factors for Hepatitis A

People at high risk for contracting hepatitis A include travelers to the developing world, day care employees and children, men who have sex with men, illegal drug users, and people who live in a household where someone is infected with hepatitis A. People can become infected with hepatitis A by:

• Eating or drinking food or water contaminated with hepatitis A virus
• Engaging in unsafe sexual practices

Risk Factors for Hepatitis B

People at high risk for contracting hepatitis B include those who have multiple sex partners, men who have sex with men, hemodialysis patients, people infected with HIV, and healthcare workers exposed to blood. Also at risk are individuals born in or emigrating from regions with high infection rates (including Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean).

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The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood, semen, and vaginal secretions. Behaviors and risk factors that increase the risk of hepatitis B transmission include:

• Sexual contact with an infected person
• Sharing needles and drug injection equipment
• Sharing personal items, such as toothbrushes, razors, and nail clippers, with an infected person
• Having direct contact with blood of an infected person, through needlesticks or touching open wounds
• While giving birth, when an a woman infected with hepatitis B virus can pass the virus to her baby

Risk Factors for Hepatitis C

People most at risk of contracting hepatitis C are current or former drug injection users. The hepatitis C virus is transmitted by contact with infected human blood.

• Most people are infected through sharing needles or other drug injection equipment.
• Less commonly, hepatitis C is spread through sexual contact (only rarely), sharing household items such as razors or toothbrushes, or through birth to a mother infected with hepatitis C.

Vaccination

Vaccines are available to prevent hepatitis A and B. There is no vaccine for hepatitis C.

Review Date: 09/29/2010
Reviewed By: Harvey Simon, MD, Editor-in-Chief, In-Depth Reports; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org).