TUESDAY, June 30, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- New cases of hepatitis C are drastically underreported to federal officials, researchers contend in a new study.
And they suggested that may be hampering public health efforts to cope with the chronic infection that can lead to cirrhosis or liver cancer.
The new study found that only one out of 183 Massachusetts residents diagnosed between 2001 and 2011 with acute hepatitis C infection was reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rest went unreported, either because their test results didn't come back quickly enough or because the results didn't meet the strict CDC definition for hepatitis C infection, said senior study author Dr. Arthur Kim, director of the Viral Hepatitis Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
