Widespread screening for hepatitis C — a recommendation that has been
aggressively pushed by public health officials, with the advent of new,
expensive drugs to cure the viral infection and prevent liver-disease
deaths — may be premature, a group of scientists is arguing.
In a paper published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal,
the scientists say there’s little concrete evidence that screening all
Baby Boomers for hepatitis C — a policy endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and other public health agencies — will save lives. Plus screening and
treatment could cause unnecessary harm to millions of people who test
positive for the virus but never experience any ill effects from it,
they say.
“The question is whether these aggressive screening
policies are justified and whether they would result in more benefit
than harm,” said Dr. John Ioannidis,
a Stanford epidemiologist and an author of the paper. “We know very
little about the potential harms of these drugs, especially in the
long-term. And we don’t know how they will translate into long-term
benefits.”
Read more.... Labels: boomers, testing strategies