Nearly half of the heroin users tested were positive for the liver disease.
Researchers recently confirmed what many in the medical and drug treatment community had feared: Rates of Hepatitis C are skyrocketing among New Jersey's suburban heroin users, particularly among the young.
A study that tested 861 suburban heroin users admitted to Princeton House, an inpatient treatment center, found that 44 percent tested positive for Hepatitis C, a potentially fatal but treatable disease that affects the liver. Of those, nearly two-thirds were under the age of 35.
"It's crazy. I'm not sure I even expected to see the number that high," said Ronald Nahass, an infectious disease specialist with ID Care, who conducted the study with researchers from Princeton House. "On the other hand, I don't know that I'm terribly surprised. We've noticed this happening, and it really wasn't being recognized, which is really upsetting me, frankly."
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The Princeton House study puts raw data to what was a known, if seldom discussed, trend. Heroin use has become a ubiquitous problem of New Jersey communities over the last decade, killing more than 5,000 since 2004.
More than 20,000 people have already been admitted for heroin treatment in the state since 2015, nearly 70 percent of which are intravenous drug users, which raises the specter of blood-borne diseases like Hepatitis and HIV spreading through large populations.
Though Nahass said figures are likely underreported, state Department of Health data shows the number of reported cases has doubled in New Jersey since 2003.
"The good news is, there are now viable treatments for Hepatitis," said Bob Baxter, who until recently ran the needle exchange in Newark. "The bad news is, they're incredibly expensive.
Sovaldi, for example, has been highly praised because it can eradicate Hepatitis C with few of the miserable side effects common among previous treatments. But it costs $1,000 a pill, or $84,000 for a complete 12-week course of treatment.
"We're back to the old adage that prevention is so much more important, because it's so much more cost-efficient," Baxter said. "We've got needle exchanges in this state, but there are only five of them. And it took so long to get them in place that we had about 20 years of missed opportunities."
The cost of treating the disease and the dearth of substance abuse treatment in New Jersey make it a difficult problem to address otherwise, Nahass said.
"You have a number of facilities that refuse to look, because they worry that if they do, they're going to start to incur additional costs. And not looking is just putting your head in the sand," he said. "Treatment can be a form of prevention. It's not going to solve the heroin problem ... but at least it can help slow the spread of this disease."
RELATED: How to find drug and alcohol abuse treatment in New Jersey.
"However, in the current state of the system, linking these folks to treatment can be extremely difficult, if not impossible."
A bright spot in Nahass' findings is that no patients who tested positive for Hepatitis C were cross-infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. But both Nahass and Baxter cautioned that it wouldn't take much to change that.
"It's not going to stay that way forever," Baxter said.
In one rural Indiana county, for example, at least 140 people have tested positive for HIV due to drug use, which Nahass said was tested back to a single source.
"If it got introduced into the network of users here, we're worried we'll have the same problem," he said.
Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.
