What are the symptoms of chronic hepatitis C?

Chronic hepatitis C can also cause many adverse effects and harm to people's health. Common symptoms are fatigue, poor appetite, or abdominal distension. Some patients may also show symptoms such as cirrhosis, so the harm caused is also relatively large.

1. Acute hepatitis C

Acute hepatitis C in adults is relatively mild. Most cases are acute non-icteric hepatitis with elevated ALT levels, while a few are acute icteric hepatitis with mild or moderate jaundice. Symptoms such as nausea, loss of appetite, general weakness, yellow urine and yellow eyes may occur. HCV infection alone rarely causes liver failure. Under natural conditions, only 15% of patients can spontaneously clear HCV and achieve recovery. Without antiviral treatment intervention, 85% of patients will develop chronic hepatitis C. After children are acutely infected with hepatitis C virus, 50% can spontaneously clear HCV.

2. Chronic hepatitis C

The symptoms are mild and manifest as common symptoms of hepatitis, such as fatigue, poor appetite, abdominal distension, etc. There may also be no subjective symptoms. The ALT test results fluctuated repeatedly and HCVRNA remained positive. One-third of chronic HCV-infected patients have normal liver function, with persistent positivity for anti-HCV and HCV RNA. Liver biopsy may reveal signs of chronic hepatitis and even cirrhosis.

3. Cirrhosis

After 20 to 30 years of HCV infection, 10% to 20% of patients may develop cirrhosis, and 1% to 5% of patients will develop hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and die. Once cirrhosis decompensates, such as jaundice, peritoneal effusion, varicose vein bleeding, hepatic encephalopathy, etc., the survival rate drops sharply.