Poster 1810 Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Related Arthritis and Arthralgia: The Epidemiologic and Economic Burden in the United States
Author Insight from Zobair M. Younossi, MD, MPH FACG, Center for Liver Diseases, Inova Fairfax Hospital
What’s new here and important for clinicians?
Another extrahepatic manifestation off HCV is arthralgia and arthritis. In fact, 25% of people with hepatitis C had joint pain and 1% had an inflammatory arthritis that is similar but distinct from rheumatoid arthritis. These patients have 11 times higher incidence of arthralgia and arthritis than what has been found in the general population without hepatitis C.
Further, the risk for developing rheumatoid-like arthritis is over 2 times higher in people with hepatitis C. In addition, we determined that the costs to treat hepatitis C associated with rheumatoid like arthritis in the United States is approximately $11.0 million per year.
What do patients need to know?
Like our study for depression in people with hepatitis C, we also wanted to see if people with hepatitis C have more cases of joint pain and or arthritis.
So again, we looked at all the medical literature from the early 1990s to 2014, looking for articles that studied HCV, joint pain and or arthritis.
And like depression, we found that 25% of people with hepatitis C had joint pain and 1% of the people with hepatitis C had arthritis, which was 11 times higher than what was found in the general population without hepatitis C.
And the risk for developing arthritis is over 2 times higher in people with hepatitis C.We also found that the costs to treat hepatitis C connected arthritis in the United States is approximately $11.0 million per year.
Author Contact
Zobair M. Younossi, MD, MPH FACG, Center for Liver Diseases, Inova Fairfax Hospital
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