Prevalence, Awareness, and Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in South Korea: Evidence from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

ABSTRACT

Background/Aims@#This study aimed to investigate the epi-demiology of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the Korean general population and the awareness and treatment status of HCV infection among anti-HCV-positive persons. @*Methods@#We used data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHNES) collected between 2012 and 2016. All the participants aged ≥10 years in the KNHNES were tested for the anti-HCV antibody. Anti-HCV-positive persons were tested for HCV RNA and assessed for their awareness and treatment experience regarding HCV infec-tion. @*Results@# The prevalence of anti-HCV was 0.66% (95% confidence interval, 0.56% to 0.78%) among Koreans aged ≥10 years, representing an estimated 278,819 anti-HCV-pos-itive persons, and 0.71% (95% confidence interval, 0.60% to 0.84%) among Koreans aged ≥20 years. The prevalence of anti-HCV increased with age and had significant geographic variation. The positive rate of HCV RNA in anti-HCV-positive persons was 33.5% and increased with age. The rate of HCV infection awareness was 15.2% (35/250) among antiHCV-positive persons and 30.5% (18/59) among HCV RNApositive persons. Among the participants, 13.5% of HCV RNA-positive persons had been treated for HCV infection. @*Conclusions@# The prevalence of anti-HCV among Koreans aged ≥20 years was 0.71%; one-third of anti-HCV-positive persons tested HCV RNA-positive. The awareness and treat-ment rates of HCV infection were low among HCV-infected persons. Therefore, active measures should be taken to diagnose and treat persons unaware of HCV infection.