Egypt has highest infection level of hepatitis C: study

Up to 5,000 new hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections occur in Egypt annually as a result of mother-to-child transmission, according to a new study by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK.Egypt has the highest infection level of the disease in the world. About 15% of the population carry HCV, with at least 100,000 new cases every year, but the proportion of these new infections that occur through different transmission routes is not well understood. This study is the first, for any country, to estimate the number of new cases of HCV as a consequence of mother-to-child (vertical) transmission. The authors estimated that in 2008, between 3,000 and 5,000 new cases of the infection were caused by this transmission route, which can occur during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period from an infected mother to her child. In addition, the findings show that mother-to-child transmission is an important transmission route among children under five years of age, contributing between a third and a half of new cases in that age group in Egypt. Lenka Benova, lead author of the study and research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and WCMC-Q, said: “This is the first time we have been able to show how many babies are being infected with HCV every year in Egypt, and action needs to be taken to reduce the number of children becoming part of this devastating epidemic. We need to see faster evaluation of drugs that women can use during pregnancy to treat hepatitis C, as well as interventions to provide treatment to women before they become pregnant.”Dr Laith Abu-Raddad, principal investigator of the study and associate professor of public health in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Group at WCMC-Q, said: “These results highlight a significant and previously poorly understood dimension of the large HCV epidemic in this country. This high number of transmissions to small children, with lifelong clinical and social consequences, demonstrates the need for appropriate public health interventions to tackle this aspect of the epidemic.”