Kim RS, et al. - The intent of the authors was to explore the smoking behaviors in hepatitis C+ subjects in order to formulate targeted treatment strategies. Data disclosed that a cigarette smoking epidemic was embedded within the hepatitis C epidemic in the US. The implementation of effective tobacco treatment was discovered to be challenging, as illustrated by the sociodemographic profile of hepatitis C+ smokers. A requirement arose for thoughtful treatment strategies that were mindful of the unique characteristics of this group.

Methods

• Data extraction was carried out from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999-2014.
• A comparison was performed between hepatitis C+ with hepatitis C- adult individuals in the entire sample and in the subset of current smokers.
• Demographics, current smoking, cigarettes/day, nicotine dependence, other tobacco use, substance use, and medical and psychiatric comorbidities served as the measures.

Results

• Data was available with regard to complete smoking and HCV for 39,472 (90.1%) of 43,793 adult candidates in NHANES.
• It was reported that hepatitis C+ individuals smoked at approximately triple the rate of hepatitis C- adults (62.4% vs 22.9%).
• No prominent variation was discovered between hepatitis C+ men and women (64.5% vs 58.2%).
• Herein, hepatitis C+ smokers exhibited a greater tendency of smoking daily when compared to hepatitis C- smokers (87.5% vs 80.0%), nevertheless, with similar levels of nicotine dependence.
• As per the outcomes, hepatitis C+ smokers displayed a greater likelihood of being older (mean age: 47.1 vs 41.5), male (69.4% vs 54.4%), Black (21.2% vs 12.1%), less educated (any college: 31.8% vs 42.9%), poor (mean family monthly poverty index: 1.80 vs 2.47), uninsured (43.9% vs 30.4%), use drugs (cocaine: 11.1% vs 3.2%; heroin: 4.0% vs 0.6%), and of being depressed (33.2% vs 13.5%).
• Notable correlations of both hepatitis C infection and cigarette smoking with current depression and hypertension were disclosed via multivariate analyses.