Incubation period
2 weeks to 6 months, most often 6 to 10 weeks.
When a test becomes reliable
An antibody test is reliable at 8 to 11 weeks. A test that looks for the virus itself works from about 2 weeks.
Symptoms
- About 4 in 5 people notice nothing during the first months
- When symptoms do appear: tiredness, nausea, no appetite, aching joints
- Yellowing of the skin and eyes, dark urine
- A long-term infection can run for twenty years or more with no sign before the liver damage shows
Good to know
- There is no vaccine, unlike hepatitis A and B
- Since around 2014 a course of direct-acting antiviral tablets clears the virus in the great majority of people
- The WHO has set a target of eliminating it as a public health threat by 2030
- Sexual transmission is much less efficient than for hepatitis B, but it is not zero
How it was discovered
Through the 1970s and 1980s doctors kept seeing hepatitis after blood transfusions that was neither hepatitis A nor hepatitis B, and for a decade it was simply called non-A, non-B hepatitis. Finding it took a new approach: instead of looking down a microscope, Michael Houghton's team screened millions of DNA fragments from infected blood against the antibodies of a patient. The virus was identified in 1989, and Houghton, Harvey Alter and Charles Rice shared the Nobel Prize for it in 2020.
Last updated: September 2026
This page is general information, not a diagnosis and not medical advice. Symptoms overlap between infections, and many infections have none at all — only a test can tell. If you think you have been exposed, talk to a doctor.