Universal hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening among pregnant women in the United States is cost effective and improves detection of HCV among women and children, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The authors call on national professional societies to endorse universal testing. HCV infection rates among pregnant women have doubled nationally between 2009 and 2014 to about 0.7 percent (or roughly 42,000 pregnancies annually), but infection rates reach as high as 8 percent in rural Tennessee. These increases are largely associated with increases in opioid injection. Risk-based screening of pregnant women is recommended by the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), while the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the Infectious Diseases Society of America has joint guidelines recommending universal screening. As of now, Kentucky is the only state to pass HCV testing regulations requiring all pregnant women to be tested during their first prenatal visit with a health provider. The researchers developed a model to evaluate from a payer perspective the cost-effectiveness of universal HCV screening of pregnant women followed by treatment after pregnancy versus risk-based […]