The Stages of HCV Infection
Viral hepatitis is a disease as old as the history of Medicine. Hepatitis was described in the Babylonian Talmud in the Fifth Century BC, and was referenced by Hippocrates over 2000 years ago.
This disease is often called the dragon because it will drag-on and drag-on for the rest of your life; and also because it sleeps for many years before awaking and breathing its fiery breath. It's name is frequently shortened to either HCV for Hepatitis C Virus or CHC for Chronic Hepatitis C.HCV has two stages, the acute stage and the chronic stage.
Acute HCV
After exposure to HCV, there is an incubation period from 15 to 150 days. The time frame depends on the amount of virus that entered the body; thus a needlestick injury would be less severe then a transfusion during this phase of the disease. Most patients have no clinical symptoms or jaundice in this phase; thus they may be unaware they have become infected. However, some liver cell injury occurs during this time.
Chronic HCV
The disease becomes chronic if the body has not cleared the HCV virus within six months. The severity or rapidness of progress in this stage of the disease is not based on the amount of virus that initially infected the person. The disease quietly and unobtrusively progresses for the next decade, or two, or three. Up to 50% of chronic HCV patients eventually have symptoms. However, many people never have symptoms and discover they have chronic HCV through routine blood work or when donating blood.
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