It can result in cirrhosis (a permanently scarred liver that prevents blood from flowing through it), liver failure and liver cancer.

Liver failure due to hepatitis C is currently the leading cause of liver transplants in this country.

Hepatitis C is a virus and can be contracted in the following ways:

* Accidental pricks from needles used on patients carrying the disease
* Getting a tattoo with dirty needles or piercing ears and the body with dirty needles
* Injecting drugs with contaminated needles
* Snorting drugs with a straw that has become contaminated
* Sharing a razor, toothbrush or other personal item used by someone with hepatitis C
* Undergoing kidney machine treatment
* Undergoing an organ transplant or blood transfusion prior to 1992
* Getting a manicure with contaminated instruments
* Acupuncture

In other words, it's fairly easy to pick up the virus, and many patients -- as many as 40 percent of the almost 5 million in the United States -- don't know how they picked up the disease. Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called it "an epidemic for anyone."

Once infected with hepatitis C, a person can be contagious to others in as short a time span as two weeks. Because the disease arrives virtually asymptomatic in its early stages, a blood test is the only way to detect it. Some develop problems within five years of getting the virus; others feel fine even 20 years later. In 15 percent of cases, the liver rids itself of the virus.

Until the early 1990s, there was no test for hepatitis C and patients infected with it were merely diagnosed as having a form of hepatitis different from the familiar forms.

Complicating the virus is its tendency to mutate into diverse genotypes. In the Midcoast, doctors see predominantly genotype 1a (which is also common in South America and Australia), whereas in Europe and Asia genotype 1b is more common.

There are currently approximately 4 million people in the United States afflicted with hepatitis C and 60 to 85 percent of all infections develop into chronic infections, with individuals living with the virus for years.