Hepatitis C cases among young people in Central Appalachia up 364% from 2006 to 2012

Hepatitis C cases among people under 30 in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia increased by 364 percent from 2006 to 2012, says a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the time period, 1,377 cases of hepatitis C were reported in the four states, and the median age of infection is 25.

Of those cases, 616 involved people under 30, and 315 were from rural areas, with 95 of those people saying they used intravenous drugs. The number of rural cases was evenly split between men and women—157 men and 156 women—but the majority of cases involved whites, with 247—or 78.4 percent—of cases being white, and the ethnicity of 60 cases being unknown.

During the same time period, the four states saw an increase in the number of people under 30 admitted to substance abuse centers for opioid dependency, with the number of heroin admissions increasing from 8.6 percent in 2011 to 12 percent in 2012. The region saw the number of first-time heroin users increase from 90,000 in 2006 to 156,000 in 2012, while the number of people who reported heroin dependency increased from 214,000 in 2002 to 467,000 in 2012. (CDC graphic: Hepatitis C cases among people under 30 in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia)