How does hepatitis C become chronic?
Most of the time hepatitis C is chronic. In this video, family physician Sharecare Advisory Board member Daniel Spogen, MD, describes why hepatitis C becomes chronic and how long it can lie dormant before symptoms start.
Transcript
So most of the time, it is chronic. And that's the problem. And so hepatitis C basically gets into the liver,
and it lies dormant. And it just gradually, slowly causes inflammation.
And so it may be a couple of months. It actually may be a couple of years before hepatitis C becomes evident.
And mostly usually, the hepatitis C is diagnosed through a blood test for something else.
And the doctor finds out the liver is inflamed and then does a series of tests and finally figures out it's hepatitis C.
It can lie dormant for decades, actually, before you have to actually end up with treatment. So in the past when only interferon therapy was
available, people would wait till the last moment before they started treatment because they basically felt OK
when it was in that smoldering phase and just an abnormal lab test, but it wasn't really
hepatitis c
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