Adult inpatients with hepatitis C are much more likely to have mental health comorbidities, compared with those who do not have hepatitis C, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
compared with 4.6% of stays that did not involve hepatitis C. Other psychiatric conditions that were more frequent in hepatitis C patients were alcohol abuse (21.5% of hepatitis C–related hospitalizations and 4.6% of all others), depression (15.7% vs. 11.3%), and psychoses (13.4% vs. 4.8%), the agency said in a statistical brief.
All four comorbidities skewed younger, and the oldest patients (73 years and older) with hepatitis C presented with each condition at about the same rate as the non–hepatitis C population. The proportions of hepatitis C–related inpatient stays with alcohol abuse by age, for example, were 20.5% for 18-51 years, 23.3% for those aged 52-72, and 5.8% for the 73-and-older group, according to data from the National Inpatient Sample, which includes more than 95% of all discharges from community (short-term, nonfederal, nonrehabilitation) hospitals in the United States.
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