Diseases may be transmitted by various means. A study from Yale School of Medicine has apparently divulged that the elevated prevalence of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) among injection drug users could be partially owing to the resilience of the virus in specific kinds of syringes.
This study may unlock new possibilities in averting the transmission of HCV. This is claimed to be the first study to verify the survival of HCV in infected syringes and the period of likely infectiousness. HCV may presumably spread via blood-to-blood contact. Presently, no vaccine against HCV and treatments may be difficult due to inadequate effectiveness, elevated price and side effects. If left untreated, HCV can be the reason for acute liver disease and even death. HCV infection from people sharing infected syringes could be one of the most general and expected effects of injection drug use.
The Yale team apparently replicated the most general scenarios of injection drug use so as to gauge the prolonged existence of the remaining virus-blood mixture left in syringes following injection. After filling blood spiked with HCV into several syringes and depressing their plungers, study authors seem to investigate the remaining blood for the attendance of infective HCV directly and subsequent to hoarding for up to nine weeks.
They seem to have noted a lengthened survival of HCV infection at all storage temperatures, with feasible quantities gauged even at nine weeks in tuberculin syringes that apparently have removable needles. They apparently viewed far less possible HCV in insulin syringes with attached needles.
Lead author Elijah Paintsil, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine, commented, “This tells us that syringes with detachable needles are the most dangerous in terms of potential HCV infection, because they are far more likely to transmit a surviving virus.â€
The discovery of extended HCV survival in detachable-needle syringes supposedly encompasses maximum insinuation outside of the United States, where application of these syringes may be more general. But it could contain chief health repercussions for cities and towns everywhere, counting the U.S. that possibly presents needle-exchange programs.
The study would be presented at the 17th Conference of Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections on Friday, February 19, 2010 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco.