Hepatitis C virus media coverage favorably impacts on antibody testing in the non-interferon era

Abstract

Background: In the non-interferon era, many patients still remain untested for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Our aim was to determine if media coverage, number and type of news, can influence the rate of HCV testing.

Methods: For each calendar year we searched from national, regional and local newspapers for articles published related to HCV between 2001 and 2013 (interferon era) and 2014-2018 (non-interferon era) and the HCV tests performed. Demographics, provider data and test result were collected from patients tested.

Results: During the studied period, 21 913 press articles were found, and we identified a total of 293 226 HCV tests. A total of 9778 HCV tests from 5237 patients tested positive (1.88%). An inverse correlation was found between media coverage and the number of HCV tests during the interferon era (r2 = -0.558, P = 0.024), where news concerning epidemiology and burden of the disease were more frequent. By contrast, in the non-interferon era a strong correlation was observed (r2 = 0.900, P = 0.019), where news related to treatment prevailed.

Conclusion: Our results show that media coverage on HCV fluctuate so the type of news. It remains to be prospectively evaluated if well designed publicity campaigns about the benefits of HCV screening and treatment influences on HCV testing.

Keywords: infectious disease; screening; social media.