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 . . . [Full text of this article]