Virendra Sharma – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2014-05-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people have been diagnosed with (a) liver disease and (b) viral hepatitis in each of the last 10 years.

Jane Ellison

Data is not collected on new cases of liver disease. Liver disease covers many individual diseases caused by different factors, such as alcoholic liver disease, fatty liver disease as well as hepatitis related diseases. The identification of new cases will take place in different settings, from general practice to hospital outpatients.

The nearest proxy measure that we have is hospital admissions. However, hospital admissions only reflect the most serious cases when people are admitted to hospital. The number of hospital admissions for liver disease rose from 35,581 in 2001-02 to 57,682 in 2011-12, an increase of 62%.

Hepatitis A, B, C and E are viruses that affect the liver. Where tests can differentiate acute from chronic infections, data is presented as newly acquired infections and where not, data is presented as newly diagnosed cases. Hepatitis surveillance data for 2013 will be available in August 2014.

Cases of confirmed newly acquired hepatitis A virus infection are reported by laboratories to Public Health England.

Table 1: Hepatitis A laboratory reports (newly acquired infections), England (2002-2012).

Year	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Number of hepatitis A reports	1,278	999	610	469	374	344	344	341	359	252	279

Data on acute hepatitis B infections are reported both from laboratories and from Health Protection Teams to Public Health England. Reporting in this way commenced in 2008.

Table 2: Reports of acute hepatitis B infections (newly acquired infections), England (2008-2012)

Year	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Number of hepatitis B reports	620	597	512	589	554

Laboratory reports of newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis C are reported to Public Health England.

Table 3: Laboratory reports of hepatitis C (newly diagnosed cases), England (2002-2012)

Year	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Number of hepatitis C reports	4,809	5,570	6,240	6,295	6,961	7,808	8,407	8,862	7,882	9,917	10,873

Note:

At present serological tests are not able to differentiate between acute and chronic cases of hepatitis C infection. Therefore, laboratory reports of hepatitis C contain both recently acquired infections and past infections. For this reason the data represent newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis C as opposed to newly acquired infections.

Laboratory reports of confirmed cases of hepatitis E are reported to Public Health England. Surveillance began in 2003.

Table 4: Laboratory reports of hepatitis E (newly acquired infections), England (2003-2012)

Year	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Number of hepatitis E reports	122	145	294	239	161	168	166	258	435	530