Over four million people in the U.S. may be infected with HCV and many do not know about their infection. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that approximately 36,000 new infections occur each year. Once infected, HCV doesn't go away. Chronic HCV can lead to cirrhosis, liver failure, liver cancer, and even death.
Various factors can speed up the course of illness, especially alcohol consumption.
Therefore, more than one drink per day is strongly discouraged in people with hepatitis C, and abstinence from alcohol is recommended. For years, many healthcare providers did not consider chronic HCV to be a significant problem. That perception has been changing for several reasons. The increasing survival of people with HIV on combination therapy has emphasized the importance of treating liver disease, because co-infected people are now often dying of liver disease, while their HIV is under control. To complicate the picture further, people with serious liver disease often cannot take protease inhibitors because of the stress they put on the liver.