STD HEPATITIS B: WHAT IS IT? HOW COMMON IS IT?
WHAT IS IT?
Hepatitis B is a virus that causes liver inflammation and damage. Recognized since the 1960s, it is a serious health concern in the United States and worldwide. The virus can cause acute as well as chronic infection, which increases the risk of later complications. So far, hepatitis B and hepatitis A are the only sexually transmitted infections that can be prevented with a vaccination.
HOW COMMON IS IT?
Approximately 300,000 people are infected with hepatitis B every year in the United States, and each year approximately 5000 people die as a result of the infection. Approximately 10 percent of the population in the United States show evidence of infection on blood testing. Even in the era of HIV and safer sex, the number of people newly infected is continuing to increase.
In the 1990s about 25 percent of new infective cases were transmitted by heterosexual contact, about 30 percent through the sharing of equipment for injection drug use, and 5-10 percent by sexual contact between men. Between 35 and 40 percent of people newly infected do not fall into any of these groups, however. Before the 1980s and awareness of the existence of HIV the group with the largest number of hepatitis infections was men who have sex with other men, but with the advent of safer sex practices in this group, heterosexual transmission is now more common.
The risk of becoming infected with hepatitis B increases with the number of sexual contacts a person has. People who have sex in exchange for money are at very high risk. Persons who have been diagnosed with another sexually transmitted disease are also at higher risk of being infected with hepatitis B, through unsafe sexual practices. In one study of 2000 people who were patients at an STD clinic, 28 percent of those twenty-five and older showed evidence of hepatitis B infection, whereas 7 percent of those younger than twenty-five showed evidence of infection. About 5 percent of those infected in the United States become carriers of the infection, as discussed later in this section.
There are some geographic differences in patterns of hepatitis B infection. In most Southeast Asian and some African countries, the rate of infection is high. About 90 percent of people in these countries have evidence in their blood of previous or current infection with hepatitis B, and approximately 10-20 percent of them are carriers of the infection.
Mothers who are chronically infected with hepatitis B have a greater than 80 percent chance of infecting their unborn children while in the womb and during delivery. If a child is infected, there is a high probability that he or she will become a carrier of hepatitis B as well; however, steps can be taken to help protect against infection of the newborn.
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