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IDSA urges USPSTF to reconsider HCV testing recommendation
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The Infectious Diseases Society of America has urged the US Preventive Services Task Force on hepatitis C virus testing to strengthen its recommendation for HCV screening in baby boomers, according to a statement from David A. Relman, MD, FIDSA, president of the IDSA.
The USPSTF recommended that clinicians consider screening for their patients, but it did not advise routine screening for all Americans born from 1945 to 1965.
Relman said the IDSA is “gravely concerned that an estimated 800,000 baby boomers may not realize they have a potentially deadly virus if draft recommendations from the Task Force regarding screening for hepatitis C virus are adopted.”
In August, the CDC recommended that all adults born from 1945 to 1965 get a one-time test for HCV, estimating that routine testing would save up to 120,000 lives. Previously, the CDC recommended that only those with known risk factors for HCV, such as injection drug users and recipients of blood transfusions before 1992, be tested for the virus.
In its draft recommendation statement, the USPSTF concluded “with moderate certainty that screening for HCV infection in adults at increased risk (eg, history of intravenous drug use) has a moderate net benefit,” and that “screening for HCV infection in the 1945-1965 birth cohort has at least a small net benefit.”
“We believe that, on balance, the recommendation will cause harm by diminishing the amount of hepatitis C testing just at a time when hepatitis C treatments and our ability to cure the infection are increasing, and the disease implications are increasing,” David Thomas, MD, chairman of the IDSA Hepatitis C Task Force, told Infectious Disease News. “It’s exactly the wrong time to discourage screening, and the right time to amplify screening.”