Hepatitis - Hepatitis A

Highlights	Hepatitis B and D	Outlook
Introduction	Hepatitis C	Resources
Diagnosis	Autoimmune Hepatitis	References
Hepatitis A	Symptom Management

Hepatitis A

About one third of the US population has antibodies to hepatitis A, indicating previous infection by the virus. The hepatitis A virus infects up to 200,000 Americans every year and causes symptoms in about 134,000 of them. Almost 30% are children under age 15.

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Hepatitis A (formerly called infectious hepatitis) is excreted in feces and transmitted by contaminated food and water. Eating shellfish taken from sewage-contaminated water is a common means of contracting hepatitis A. Infected people can transmit it to others if they do not take strict sanitary precautions. Hepatitis A is infectious for two to four weeks before symptoms develop and for a few days afterward.

Among the people at risk for passing the infection along or being infected are the following:

International travelers. Hepatitis A is the hepatitis strain people are most likely to encounter in the course of international travel. In fact, in spite of the availability of a vaccine, the increase in travel to underdeveloped countries has kept the incidence of hepatitis A steady in Western nations. The incidence may even be increasing.
Day care employees and children. It is estimated that between 11% and 16% of hepatitis A cases occur among day care employees and children who attend day care. The risk for children attending day care is very low, however, if hygienic precautions are used, particularly when changing babies and handling diapers.
Sexually active homosexual men.
Intravenous drug users.
Health care, food industry, and sewage workers.

A fly may act as a mechanical vector of diseases such as Hepatitis A, which means the fly carries the infective organism on its feet or mouth parts and contaminates food or water which a person then consumes. A biological vector actually develops an infective organism in its body and passes it along to its host, usually through its saliva. A fly can be a biological vector, as in the transmission of leishmaniasis by the sandfly.

Symptoms of Acute Hepatitis

Symptoms of acute viral hepatitis may begin suddenly or develop gradually. They may be so mild that patients mistake the disease for the flu. They include the following:

Nearly all patients experience some fatigue and often have mild fever.
Gastrointestinal problems are very common, including nausea, vomiting, a general feeling of discomfort in the abdomen, or a sharper pain that may occur in the upper right area if the abdomen. This pain tends to increase during jerking movements, such as climbing stairs or riding on a bumpy road.
GI problems can lead to loss of appetite, weight loss, and dehydration.
After about two weeks, dark urine and jaundice (a yellowish color in the skin and whites of the eyes) develops in some, but not all, patients. (Children tend not to develop jaundice.)
About half of all hepatitis patients have light colored stools, muscle pain, drowsiness, irritability, and itching, usually mild.
Diarrhea and joint aches occur in about a quarter of patients.
The liver may be tender and enlarged and most people have mild anemia.
In about 10% of patients, the spleen is enlarged.