Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. Jun 25, 2025; 14(2): 97421
Published online Jun 25, 2025. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v14.i2.97421
Influence of substance use on rising hepatitis A hospitalizations in the United States: A decade-long comparative study
Vinay Jahagirdar, Misha Gautam, Waqas Rasheed, Hanna Blaney, Hassam Ali, Hassan Ghoz
Vinay Jahagirdar, Hassam Ali, Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23219, United States
Misha Gautam, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas, MI 64110, United States
Waqas Rasheed, Department of Internal Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX 79430, United States
Hanna Blaney, Department of Gastroenterology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Bethesda, MD 20892, United States
Hassan Ghoz, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States
Co-first authors: Vinay Jahagirdar and Misha Gautam.
Author contributions: Jahagirdar V contributed to conceptualization, data curation, writing original draft, review and editing, and project administration; Jahagirdar V and Gautam M contributed equally to this work; Gautam M contributed to writing original draft, review, and editing; Rasheed W contributed to investigation and methodology; Ali H and Blaney H contributed to formal analysis, data curation, validation, and visualization; Ghoz H contributed to supervision, writing, editing, and project administration; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The National Inpatient Sample database lacks any patient and hospital-specific identifiers. Hence, this study was exempt from Institutional Review Board (IRB) review as per guidelines put forth by our institutional IRB for research on database studies.
Informed consent statement: The National Inpatient Sample database contains de-identified patient data, and informed consent is not required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: Data from this study are available from the National Inpatient Sample database, subject to the database's terms of use.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hassam Ali, MD, Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, 2100 Stantonsburg Road, Greenville, NC 27834, United States. alih20@ecu.edu
Received: May 29, 2024
Revised: October 25, 2024
Accepted: November 22, 2024
Published online: June 25, 2025
Processing time: 389 Days and 10.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study highlights the significant rise in hepatitis A virus (HAV) hospitalizations in the United States from 2011 to 2020, particularly among individuals with substance use disorders. Our findings indicate that younger males and Whites are disproportionately affected, with Southern states bearing the majority of the hospitalization burden. Notably, patients with substance use had higher rates of severe complications, including infective endocarditis and sepsis. The study underscores the urgent need for targeted public health interventions and enhanced vaccination efforts to mitigate the healthcare and economic impacts of HAV, especially among high-risk populations.