Hepatitis B and C are common blood-borne viral infections that primarily affect the liver. About 350 million people are infected with hepatitis B across the globe, and there are about 1.2 million cases in the United States. 

Worldwide, about 170 million people have hepatitis C, while about 2.4 million Americans are infected. It is the leading cause of liver cirrhosis and liver transplants in the United States. Hepatitis B and C are known as silent killers because the diseases develop very slowly over many years, and thus most patients have no symptoms and don’t even know they are infected.

"We are the largest hepatitis treatment and clinical trials center in the region and serve as the primary referral center for Connecticut and southern New England for primary care, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, and other specialty providers who wish to refer both routine and complex cases of viral hepatitis," said Joseph Lim, MD, director of the Yale Medicine Viral Hepatitis Program. 

Hepatitis is caused by a virus in the blood. Like other viruses, a person becomes infected with hepatitis through exposure to the virus. Hepatitis B and C cause inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis B is preventable via a vaccine, but there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.

Hepatitis B: Although most commonly acquired early in life, adults can also contract it. Hepatitis B is largely transmitted through bodily fluids. It can be passed at birth from a hepatitis B-infected mother or through exposure in early childhood to body fluids, blood or contaminated medical instruments. Hepatitis B can also be transmitted through intranasal and injection drug use as well as infected tools used during tattooing and body piercing.

Hepatitis C: The key risk factors are also intranasal and injection drug use, tattoos and body piercings, high-risk sexual contact, blood transfusions before 1992 (the year that widespread screening of donated blood began) and organ transplantation.

Another key risk factor for hepatitis C is being born from 1945 to 1965, during the baby-boom years. Eighty percent of all people who currently have hepatitis C in the United States were born in that timeframe.

Although the reasons that baby boomers are more likely to have hepatitis C than others aren’t entirely understood, it’s believed that most were infected in the 1970s and 1980s, when rates of hepatitis C were at their peak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommend that all U.S. adults born from 1945 to 1965 undergo a one-time screening test for hepatitis C. Connecticut is one of several states that has written this recommendation into law. In Connecticut ,the law requires that primary care clinicians screen all adults born within those years.

Hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable disease.

There is a three-shot vaccination series that is very effective in protecting people against the virus if they’re exposed. In the United States, all newborns are vaccinated for hepatitis B and all pregnant women are screened for hepatitis B during pregnancy. This way, mothers infected with hepatitis B can take protective steps to decrease the risk of transmission of the virus to the child.

There is no vaccine for hepatitis C.

In most patients, hepatitis B develops slowly over the course of several decades, and thus most patients have no symptoms. People who have advanced liver disease such as cirrhosis of the liver may experience complications and symptoms that reflect liver failure. Other symptoms include:

• A buildup of fluid within the abdominal cavity (ascites)
• Confusion and tremors (encephalopathy), which are complications due to the inability of the liver to filter out toxins that are normally cleaned out by a healthy liver
• Vomiting of blood, or blood within the stool (variceal bleeding). This is a complication in which enlarged veins within the esophagus or stomach bleed as a consequence of increased pressure around the diseased liver.

Most patients with chronic hepatitis C infection report no symptoms. But some patients may have very nonspecific symptoms related to fatigue and discomfort on the right side of the abdomen. Often, symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of hepatitis C are noticeable only at the end stage of liver disease, when the patient has developed liver cirrhosis and liver failure.

Because hepatitis B and C typically have no specific symptoms, many people who have the viruses don’t even know it.

Hepatitis B is diagnosed by a series of blood tests. The test may show an ongoing infection or antibodies that indicate that the patient is protected against hepatitis B. In patients who have a positive screening test that suggests the possibility of ongoing infection, further testing is done to determine the levels of the virus in the bloodstream.

Hepatitis C is diagnosed via a blood test called a Hepatitis C Antibody Test. A positive result means that hepatitis C antibodies are present in the blood. But a positive antibody test doesn’t necessarily mean a person has hepatitis C. A further blood test is needed to confirm the diagnosis. This second blood test quantifies the amount of the virus or the “viral load” in the liver and the bloodstream.

Hepatitis B: Not all patients with chronic hepatitis B infection require treatment. At Yale Medicine, specialists decide on an individual basis whether a patient is an appropriate candidate for treatment. Generally, patients require treatment when their hepatitis B virus level is high, and when laboratory tests demonstrate significant inflammation or injury to the liver.

There are currently seven approved drugs for hepatitis B, two of which are considered to be first-line treatments. These drugs are oral pills taken once daily, and while they're very effective at suppressing the virus to very low or undetectable levels over the long term, they are not considered curative.

Therefore, the goal of treatment is to control the virus long-term and decrease the risk of hepatitis B related complications such as cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Hepatitis C: For the greater part of the last 20 years, treatment of hepatitis C required the use of a chemotherapy-like injection drug called interferon, which has been associated with serious side effects and a low cure rate. Fortunately, advances in hepatitis C treatments within the last three years now allow for the use of oral medications that are significant improvements in terms of safety and effectiveness.

Because there are six types of hepatitis C, patients need to speak with their doctor about which oral treatment is appropriate. But most oral therapies are associated with cure rates over 90 percent and are usually short in duration, typically 12 weeks total.

The Viral Hepatitis Program at Yale Medicine represents one of the leading viral hepatitis treatment programs in the country and is engaged in innovative research focused on advancing the care of patients with chronic hepatitis B, C and D infections.  

A multidisciplinary team of faculty physicians and mid-level providers offer a coordinated approach to preparing patients for success. Services include structured hepatitis patient education classes, mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques (MBSR), a formal physician-guided weight-loss program and access to clinical trials evaluating current and new therapies that are not available in routine clinical practice. 

Our program is a core member of several national and international observational cohort studies which contributes to the advancement of science of hepatitis treatment around the world.

"Our team at Yale Medicine is uniquely equipped to serve patients with viral hepatitis from Connecticut and beyond and aims to offer outstanding, individualized, patient-centered care to help educate and guide patients through their treatment," says Dr. Lim. “We have specialists who have nationally recognized expertise in the management of viral hepatitis in special populations, including HCV-HIV coinfection, end-stage renal disease, cirrhosis/liver failure, post-liver transplant, and prior failure to respond to all-oral direct acting antivirals (DAAs).”