Viral Hepatitis
What is Hepatitis?
Hepatitis disease means liver inflammation. Viral hepatitis means that a person has liver inflammation due to a virus. Viral infection of the liver makes the liver swell up and stop working well. The liver is an important organ. It helps your body with these functions:
- Digests food
- Stores energy
- Removes poisons
What are the signs of viral hepatitis
Some people with viral hepatitis have no signs of the infection. For other people, these signs might occur:
- Low grade fever
- Headache
- Muscle aches
- Tiredness
- Loss of appetite
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Dark-colored urine and pale bowel movements
- Pain in the stomach
- Skin and whites of the eyes turning yellow, also called jaundice
Hepatitis A
How you get it: Eating food or drinking water contaminated with feces, or the bowel movement (BM), from a person infected with the hepatitis A virus (HAV). It can also be caused by anal-oral contact. Some examples include:
- Eating food contaminated by a person with hepatitis A who prepares food. It can happen if the person did not wash his hands after using the bathroom and then touched the food.
- From infected household members or sexual partners
- Diaper changing tables, if not cleaned properly
- Eating raw selfish that came from sewage-contaminated water
Treatment: It usually gets better on its own. Almost everyone who gets hepatitis A gets better.
Hepatitis B
How you get it: Contact with a person infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV). This can occur through having sex with an infected person, from an infected mother to her baby during childbirth, or through sharing needles with an infected person.
What it does to your body: The liver swells, and liver damage can occur. Most people will get rid of the virus after a few months. Some people are not able to get rid of the virus, which makes the infection chronic, or life-long. This may lead to a scarring of the liver, called cirrhosis, liver failure, and can also lead to liver cancer.
Treatment: Acute hepatitis B usually gets better on its own. Most people develop immunity to the virus and after recovery, can’t give it to others. Someone with chronic (long-term) hepatitis B still carries the virus and can pass it to others. Chronic hepatitis B can be treated with the drugs interferon, lamivudine, or adefovir. These drugs do not work for everyone.
Hepatitis C
How you get it: Most often through sharing injection drugs with a person infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Many people don’t have symptoms and don’t know they have it.
What it does to your body: Causes swelling of the liver and liver damage. Most people who are infected with HCV develop a chronic infection. This might lead to scarring of the liver, called cirrhosis, liver failure, and can also lead to liver cancer.
Treatment: In some cases, it gets better on its own. The current treatment of choice is combination therapy using pegylated interferon and ribavirin.
Hepatitis D
How you get it: Contact with a person infected with the hepatitis D virus (HDV). You also must have current HBV infection to get HDV infection. HDV infection can occur by sharing needles to inject drugs, by having sex with an infected person, and from infected mother to child during childbirth.
What it does to your body: Causes swelling of the liver and can lead to liver disease and cirrhosis.
Treatment: It might get better on its own. Antiviral drugs might be helpful in treating chronic HDV infection.
Hepatitis E
How you get it: A person can get infected with hepatitis E virus (HEV) by eating food or drinking water contaminated with feces from an infected person. Hepatitis E is usually a disease that occurs in persons who travel to areas that have high rates of HEV infection. This type of hepatitis is not common in the United States.
What it does to your body: It causes swelling of the liver, but no long-term damage. Pregnant women and their babies are at increased risk of dying if infected with HEV.
Treatment: It usually goes away on its own.