Symptoms include nausea, jaundice, fever, and tenderness around the liver, but there are often no symptoms. Once infected, vaccines do not help. No known cure exists, but drugs such as interferon alfa and ribavirin seem to help. A report in January 2000 in the New England Journal of Medicine warned that people with hepatitis C faced a dramatically higher risk of dying if they eat food infected with hepatitis A. Hepatitis D - It is associated with hepatitis B infection. People with both hepatitis B and D have an 80 percent chance of chronic liver disease.
Drug users face the highest risk of infection.
Only three known strains have been identified globally. It is a major cause of liver failure in developing nations. Passed in the feces and blood, infection is devastating to pregnant women, killing 10 to 20 percent of women infected in their third trimester. Hepatitis G - Very rare, it causes up to 2,000 infections a year, but most victims have no symptoms. It is transmitted in infected blood and repeated exposure to hepatitis C seems to be a risk factor.