During his six years in Birmingham, information about the virus continued to evolve. We were in one of three CDC hepatitis C surveillance counties, so we had people from the CDC come and talk to us regularly. Now there is some treatment for the virus, but it is a yearlong routine of antiviral drugs that has the side effects of chemotherapy and works only about 30 percent of the time. In each case, he evaluates them to see if the treatment is appropriate. It's not always an easy call.
Patients can carry the virus for decades without any symptoms.
If they are healthy, and a liver biopsy shows there is little damage, treatment might be more trouble than it's worth. In other patients, particularly in those who drink alcohol, damage is advanced and it can be too late for treatment. For them, a transplant becomes the only option. The cases that lie somewhere in between are the most likely candidates for treatment, Dr. Yates said. If we intervene, we may be able to stop the progression to cirrhosis, and we may be able to save them from transplant.