-1.webp?max-h=442&w=760&fit=crop&crop=faces,center)
New research from the University of California San Diego and el Colegio de la Frontera Norte indicates a troubling link between illicit fentanyl use and the transmission of hepatitis C among individuals who use drugs in the border cities of San Diego and Tijuana. Detailed in Clinical Infectious Diseases, as per the University of California San Diego, the study found that those who inject drugs and are using fentanyl illicitly face a 64 percent higher risk of acquiring this liver disease compared to non-fentanyl users.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported instances of acute hepatitis C have spiked since 2014, with an additional growth of 5 percent in 2021 over the previous year, pointing to a concerning trend: HCV, often contracted through blood contact, is easy to transmit unknowingly due to its frequently dormant symptoms, which can take months or even years to appear.
Dr. Joseph Friedman, a resident physician at UC San Diego and the study’s first author, explains a new perspective on HCV's progression amongst young people. The frequent need to dose due to fentanyl’s short half-life could result in more shared needles and smoking instruments, raising transmissibility—not only among injectors but also among smokers of the drug.
The study's implications strike at the core of public health, underlining the urgency for better availability of fentanyl testing kits and point-of-care HCV tests, which diagnoses the virus effectively; these are widely used in countries outside the United States but have only recently begun to gain approval for use stateside despite their significant potential for early detection and intervention. "Since hepatitis C can be cured with a short course of antiviral treatment," Dr. Gudelia Rangel, a study co-author from el Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said, per the University of California San Diego, "efforts are needed in both the U.S. and Mexico to make these treatments more widely available."
