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Tattoo Parlors Linked to Spread of Hepatitis C
By Merritt McKinney
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Tattooing may be an overlooked source of hepatitis C infections, Texas researchers report.
In their study, which was conducted in the early 1990s, people who received tattoos at a commercial tattoo parlor were more than six times as likely to have hepatitis C than people who did not have tattoos.
Nearly 4 million Americans have hepatitis C, making it the most common chronic viral infection in the US. Chronic inflammation of the liver develops in about 70% of infected patients, and about 20% of people with hepatitis will develop cirrhosis, a severe and possibly fatal scarring of the liver. Cirrhosis increases the risk of liver cancer.
Hepatitis C is spread through contact with blood and other body fluids, but the route of transmission remains undetermined in a substantial percentage of infections.
Commercial tattooing is an important ``missing risk factor'' in the spread of hepatitis C, Dr. Robert W. Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas told Reuters Health in an interview.
Haley and his co-author, Dr. R. Paul Fischer of Presbyterian Hospitals of Dallas, conducted a study of 626 patients seeing a physician for spinal problems. Each patient was asked about a number of potential risk factors for hepatitis C. After the interview, the study participants were screened for the virus.
Writing in the March issue of the journal Medicine, the researchers report that 18% of all patients had at least one tattoo. Twenty-two percent of patients with tattoos were infected with hepatitis C, compared with only 3.5% of patients without tattoos. The hepatitis C rate was about 33% in patients who had been tattooed at a commercial tattoo parlor rather than at home or at another location.
The risk for hepatitis C was even higher in patients with more complicated or more colorful tattoos, the authors note.
According to Haley, hepatitis C can be transmitted if a tattoo artist does not properly sterilize needles or other equipment. And, he added, some of the equipment used is extremely difficult to sterilize thoroughly. Haley pointed out that regulation of tattoo parlors varies widely from place to place, with no regulations in place in about one third of states.
The researchers conclude that in the face of the potential risk of tattooing, regulations on commercial tattoo parlors should be strengthened.
Several previous studies have detected a link between tattoos and an increased risk of hepatitis C, the report indicates. Not all research has supported the connection, however.
Besides tattoos, other major risk factors for infection were injection-drug use, certain hospital jobs (for men only) and heavy beer drinking. Haley explained that drinking alcohol does not transmit hepatitis C, but heavy drinking can make the liver more susceptible to the virus.
The researchers did not detect an increased risk of hepatitis C in patients who had had blood transfusions, which can spread the virus, or in patients with multiple sexual partners.
SOURCE: Medicine March 2001.
