Hepatitis C screening

What it is

Hepatitis C screening is done with an HCV antibody test. Two answers to the question of who should be screened sit side by side in the material, and both are worth holding.

The universal answer is that hepatitis C screening should be done at least once in a lifetime for all adults aged 18 years and older, and for all pregnant women during each pregnancy, in both cases except in settings where the prevalence of HCV RNA-positivity is less than 0.1%. One source gives the same rule as an age band, an HCV antibody test once for adults 18 to 79 years.

The other answer is a band of birth years: screening in persons at risk for infection, and also one-time screening for adults born between 1945 and 1965. The reason for that band is that, according to data from 1999 to 2008, approximately 75% of patients living with HCV infection were born between 1945 and 1965. The two answers are reported this way in different places; the band of birth years is the narrower of the two and the universal adult rule the wider.