Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Aug 28, 2017; 9(24): 1040-1042
Published online Aug 28, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i24.1040
Lurking epidemic of hepatitis C virus infection in Iran: A call to action
Reza Taherkhani, Fatemeh Farshadpour
Reza Taherkhani, the Persian Gulf Biomedical Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran
Fatemeh Farshadpour, the Persian Gulf Tropical Medicine Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran
Author contributions: Taherkhani R and Farshadpour F both contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest in the content of this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Fatemeh Farshadpour, PhD, the Persian Gulf Tropical Medicine Research Center, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Moallem Street, Bushehr 7514633341, Iran. f.farshadpour@yahoo.com
Telephone: +98-91-71712653 Fax: +98-77-14550235
Received: May 4, 2017
Peer-review started: May 4, 2017
First decision: June 15, 2017
Revised: June 19, 2017
Accepted: July 14, 2017
Article in press: July 17, 2017
Published online: August 28, 2017
Processing time: 112 Days and 20.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Iran is known as a low-endemic country for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, while the recent population-based epidemiological studies have revealed the increasing burden of HCV infection in the Iranian population. The asymptomatic nature of HCV infection and the undiagnosed HCV-infected injecting drug users have fueled this increase. Obviously, the current management paradigm is inadequate if control of HCV infection is aimed to be achieved.