More Americans dying from hepatitis C than from AIDS

More people are dying in the U.S. from hepatitis C than from AIDS, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. More than 3.2 million Americans have the hepatitis virus, which can cause chronic infection of the liver and eventually lead to liver failure.

Hepatitis C death rates climbed to almost 5 per 100,000 in 2007, from fewer than 3 per 100,000 in 1999. In the same time period, the HIV-AIDS death rate dropped to slightly more than 4 per 100,000 from more than 6 per 100,000.

"The declines in HIV reflect the accomplishments in building a public health response to the epidemic that improved screening and provided means of access to effective treatment," said Dr. John W. Ward, director of the Division of Viral Hepatitis at the CDC and author of the study. A similar program for hepatitis C would be similarly helpful, he said.

The disease is most commonly spread by exposure to infected blood. Intravenous drug abuse is the most common method of transmission, reports MedicineNet.com.

Ward said there is now a treatment "that was about 70 effective at clearing the virus from the body, but, he said, most infected people are unaware of their condition and do not receive treatment," reports Nicholas Bakalar for The New York Times. (Read more)

Get tested, get treatment, Bluegrass HIV Coalition encourages

Today is World AIDS Day and health advocates are asking Kentuckians to get tested and get treatment.

Hundreds of Kentuckians are diagnosed with AIDS each year, reports Mary Meehan of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Minority populations are hit particularly hard, with black men nearly 10 times more likely to die of AIDS than non-Hispanic white men. Black women are almost 23 more times more likely to die from the infections, compared to non-Hispanic white women.

Though people are still dying, AIDS is not a widely-discussed disease, in part because of its past association with homosexual activity. Mark Johnson, member of the Bluegrass HIV Coalition, said AIDS can be hard for people to talk about.

In addition, the infection is often seen as treatable, in part because of people like Magic Johnson, who has had the infection more than 20 years but is still in good health. What people don't see "is the often expensive regimen of drugs that is needed to keep the worst of the disease at bay, the side effects of those medicines or the ultimate end of what is still an incurable disease," Meehan reports. (Read more)

Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day; 1.2 million Americans are thought to be infected, but only 1 in 5 know it

Friday is World AIDS Day, an opportunity to learn the facts about the virus and show support for people living with it.

In the United States, there are 1.2 million people living with the HIV infection, which leads to AIDS. Of those who are infected with the virus in the U.S., only one in five know they have it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Each year, about 50,000 Americans become infected. About 1,700 Kentuckians were diagnosed with HIV between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2009; Kentucky ranks 19th in the country for the number of people who have the HIV infection.

Since the epidemic began, nearly 594,500 people have died with AIDS in the U.S. Between 1981 and 2007, more than 25 million people have died from the virus around the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke of the epidemic in a Nov. 8 address at the National Institutes of Health. "The fight against AIDS began three decades ago in June 1981. American scientists reported the first evidence of a mysterious new disease," she said. "Thirty years later, we ... know a great deal about the virus itself. We understand how it is spread, how it constantly mutates in the body, how it hides from the immune system. And we have turned this knowledge to our advantage."

Most at risk are gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. The CDC estimates that though this population accounts for just 2 percent of the U.S. population, it accounted for 61 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009. But heterosexuals and people who inject drugs can also contract the disease. Heterosexuals account for 27 percent of new cases. Another 9 percent of people who contracted the virus did so by using injected drugs.

Blacks accounted for 44 percent of new HIV infections in 2009, though they only represent 14 percent of the U.S. population. In 2009, the rate of new infection was 6.5 times greater for black men than it was for white men.

People can now be tested for the infection using a saliva sample and have the results in just 15 to 20 minutes. To find an HIV/AIDS prevention and service provider by county, click here.