Commentary
See article on page 112Sex and drugs and HCV?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) often ask whether they might pass the virus to their sexual partners and some ask whether they might have acquired their infection through sex. Common sense would suggest that HCV, like hepatitis B and HIV, can be transmitted through sexual contact. The issues surrounding HCV and sex can be honed into a series of focused questions. Does sexual contact carry a risk of transmitting HCV? If so, how big is the risk? Does the size of the risk vary between groups of patients? Do specific behaviours influence the size of this risk? We are close to knowing the answers to some of these questions, the answers to others are surmised but none is known with certainty.
Convincing evidence of sexual transmission requires a history of
contact, the absence of other opportunities for infection, a credible
temporal association, and viral genetic evidence that both
Relevant Article
- Epidemiological and virological analysis of couples infected with hepatitis C virus
- H Zylberberg, V Thiers, D Lagorce, G Squadrito, F Leone, P Berthelot, C Bréchot, and S Pol
Gut 1999 45: 112-116.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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