All Journals > The Journal of Infectious Diseases > 1 June 2007 > HCV Risk Factors in Heterosexual Couples

Article Tools

Search for Related Articles

Announcements

Science Watch logo

JID Article Named "New Hot Paper" by ScienceWatch.com

Dr. Lauri Hicks' 2007 article on pneumococcal disease has been named a "hot new paper" by Thompson Reuters' ScienceWatch.com. Read a Q&A about the article with Dr. Hicks here. 

Press Release

Unique Collaboration Charts the Migrations of a Parasite that Affected History
Researchers Sequence Louse DNA from Mummies and Propose New Model for its Development


In the News

Featured in Grist
"Another symptom of swine flu: instant amnesia" May 11, 2009
Swine Influenza Virus: Zoonotic Potential and Vaccination Strategies for the Control of Avian and Swine Influenzas
Eileen Thacker and Bruce Janke
Read the veterinary literature on swine flu and you get a strong sense of what might be called vaccination treadmill: the hog industry is literally scrambling to generate new vaccines for the rapidly evolving flu strains that sweep through CAFOs. Writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases [PDF] in 2008, Eileen Thacker and Bruce Janke of Iowa State University paint a stark picture: “A number of genetically diverse viruses are circulating in swine herds throughout the world and are a major cause of concern to the swine industry,” they write. “Influenza virus infections in swine and poultry are potential sources of viruses for the next pandemic among humans.”

Featured in New York Times
"Fear of a Swine Flu Epidemic in 1976 Offers Some Lessons, and Concerns, Today" May 8, 2009
Anti‐Ganglioside Antibody Induction by Swine (A/NJ/1976/H1N1) and Other Influenza Vaccines: Insights into Vaccine‐Associated Guillain‐Barré Syndrome
Irving Nachamkin, Sean V. Shadomy, Anthony P. Moran, Nancy Cox, Collette Fitzgerald, Huong Ung, Adrian T. Corcoran, John K. Iskander, Lawrence B. Schonberger, and Robert T. Chen
Irving Nachamkin, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, examined some 1976 vaccine that had been saved by a scientist in Texas. In a paper published last year in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, he and colleagues reported that mice given the vaccine made antibodies that reacted with gangliosides, which are components of nerve cells. An antibody attack on gangliosides is part of the disease mechanism of Guillain-Barré.

Featured in AFP
"Swine flu vaccine 'could be ready soon'" May 7, 2009
A Broadly Protective Vaccine against Globally Dispersed Clade 1 and Clade 2 H5N1 Influenza Viruses
Mary A. Hoelscher, Neetu Singh, Sanjay Garg, Lakshmi Jayashankar, Vic Veguilla, Aseem Pandey, Yumi Matsuoka, Jacqueline M. Katz, Ruben Donis, Suresh K. Mittal, and Suryaprakash Sambhara
The vaccine Mittal created for the bird flu worked on three different strains isolated over a seven-year period and was described in papers for the Journal of Infectious Diseases and the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Featured in Newsweek
"The Path of a Pandemic" http://www.newsweek.com/id/195692
Swine Influenza Virus: Zoonotic Potential and Vaccination Strategies for the Control of Avian and Swine Influenzas
Eileen Thacker and Bruce Janke
Last year researchers from Iowa State University in Ames warned that pigs located in industrial-scale farms were being subjected to influenza infections from farm poultry, wild birds and their human handlers. Writing in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Eileen Thacker and Bruce Janke said, "As a result of the constantly changing genetic makeup of individual influenza viruses in pigs, the U.S. swine industry is continually scrambling to respond to the influenza viruses circulating within individual production systems."

1 June 2007

Volume 195, Number 11
The Journal of Infectious Diseases 2007;195:1572–1581
© 2007 by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved.
0022-1899/2007/19511-0005$15.00
DOI: 10.1086/516785
MAJOR ARTICLE

Individual and Couple‐Level Risk Factors for Hepatitis C Infection among Heterosexual Drug Users: A Multilevel Dyadic Analysis

James M. McMahon,1

Enrique R. Pouget,1,2 and

Stephanie Tortu3

1National Development and Research Institutes, New York, New York; 2Yale University, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut; 3Louisiana State University, School of Public Health, New Orleans

Background.Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common bloodborne pathogen in the United States and is a leading cause of liver‐related morbidity and mortality. Although it is known that HCV is most commonly transmitted among injection drug users, the role of sexual transmission in the spread of HCV remains controversial because of inconsistent findings across studies involving heterosexual couples.

Methods.A novel multilevel modeling technique designed to overcome the limitations of previous research was performed to assess multiple risk factors for HCV while partitioning the source of risk at the individual and couple level. The analysis was performed on risk exposure and HCV screening data obtained from 265 drug‐using couples in East Harlem, New York City.

Results.In multivariable analysis, significant individual risk factors for HCV included a history of injection drug use, tattooing, and older age. At the couple level, HCV infection tended to cluster within couples, and this interdependence was accounted for by couples’ drug‐injection behavior. Individual and couple‐level sexual behavior was not associated with HCV infection.

Conclusions.Our results are consistent with prior research indicating that sexual contact plays little role in HCV transmission. Rather, couples’ injection behavior appears to account for the clustering of HCV within heterosexual dyads.

Received 15 July 2006; accepted 18 December 2006; electronically published 16 April 2007.

  • (See the editorial commentary by Hahn, on pages 1556–9.)

Reprints or correspondence: Dr. James M. McMahon, National Development and Research Institutes, 71 W. 23rd St., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10010 ().

Cited by

S. Schaefer. (2009) Sexuell übertragbare Hepatitisviren. Der Hautarzt 60:6, 456-464
Online publication date: 1-Jul-2009.
CrossRef
David M. Novick, Mary Jeanne Kreek. (2008) Critical issues in the treatment of hepatitis C virus infection in methadone maintenance patients. Addiction 103:6, 905-918
Online publication date: 1-Jul-2008.
CrossRef
Eugenia Vispo, José Martinez-Alarcon, Eva Poveda, Carlos Toro, Vincent Soriano. (2008) Initial spontaneous clearance and re-infection with a distinct hepatitis C virus genotype leading to chronic hepatitis C in an HIV+ intravenous drug user. AIDS 22:2, 318
Online publication date: 1-Feb-2008.
CrossRef
Judith A. Hahn. (2007) Sex, Drugs, and Hepatitis C Virus. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 195:11, 1556-1559
Online publication date: 1-Jun-2007.
Citation-Full Text-PDF Version (143 kB)

  • Potential conflicts of interest: none reported.

    Presented in part: XVth International AIDS Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, 11–16 July 2004 (abstract TuOrD1220); New Methods for the Analysis of Dyadic Processes, Amherst, MA, 13–15 October 2006 (poster 21).

    Financial support: National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse (grants R01DA12805 to S.T. and R01DA15410 to J.M.M.).

Back to Top
Close Popup