Worry and anger must be intense for the nearly 6,000 patients awaiting hepatitis C test results. They were recently identified as being at high risk for hepatitis C exposure by an employee (now former employee) at two Colorado medical centers. To date, ten patients have tested positive for hepatitis C, though it isn't yet certain if they are connected to this case. Reading this frightening story creates a mixture of incredulous responses, ranging from "how could this have happened?" to "what kind of person would do this?". Here's a recap of what's publicly known.

Kristen Diane Parker is accused of stealing drugs while employed as a scrub tech (someone who prepares and sets up an operating room for surgery) at the Rose Medical Center in Denver and the Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs. According to police documents, she would exchange used (dirty), saline-filled syringes that she kept in her pocket with new hospital syringes containing the pain medication Fentanyl.

Bizarre news broke last week about the possibility that 6,000 people were exposed to hepatitis C and other blood-borne infections. The events center around an operating room technician formerly employed at Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado and Audubon Ambulatory Surgery Center in nearby Colorado Springs. It's reported that she stole the pain medication Fentanyl by swapping new hospital syringes filled with the drug with her own used needles filled with saline.

Today is National HIV Testing Day, which provides a good opportunity to learn two important things: your HIV status and how HIV is a serious complication for those with hepatitis.

An estimated quarter million people in the United States don't know they have HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS. From this, it's reasonable to assume that millions more can't, with complete assurance, state their HIV status. This is an important problem all on its own, but it's very bad for people with hepatitis or people who are at risk for hepatitis infection. For example, infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is more serious in persons with HIV infection. It's also true that HCV infection interferes with HIV treatment. Because of this, it's important for people to know of their HIV status so they can take advantage of all the treatment options possible. Here's a great place to find an HIV testing location.

The risk factors are similar for HIV and HCV. For both, injecting drugs are common ways of infection. To a much lesser extent, it is also possible to spread hepatitis C sexually, but this is more likely with HIV. For more information about HIV, start with the HIV/AIDS site.

The risk of liver cancer is on the rise for people with hepatitis C. In a new study, the Academia Sinica scientist Michael Ming-Chiao Lai reports that people infected with chronic hepatitis C infection are now up to 10 times more likely to develop liver cancer than previously thought. Previously, people with hepatitis B carried the most risk of developing liver cancer. However, thanks to the hepatitis B vaccine, this risk has now shifted to those with hepatitis C. Combined with a drug therapy that only works in half the patients and no effective vaccine, hepatitis C patients are nearly five times more likely to develop liver disease than those with hepatitis B, and 10 times more likely if they are heavy drinkers with hepatitis C. With numbers like this, and the seriousness of liver cancer, hepatitis C prevention is more important than ever.