Hepatitis C is spiking among young Americans

Cases of hepatitis C in the United States have nearly tripled within a five-year period, reaching a new 15-year high of around 34,000 new hepatitis C infections in 2015, federal health officials reported. Experts attribute the higher rates to more injection drug use during the ongoing opioid epidemic.

The new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that cases of the disease rose substantially, from 850 new cases in 2010 to 2,436 cases in 2015.