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People seeking to get a tattoo should be picky about the parlour they have them done at, US researchers say in the wake of a study that found a link between body art and hepatitis C.

According to the study, which appeared in the journal Hepatology, people with the hepatitis C virus, which is blood-borne, were almost four times more likely to report having a tattoo, even when other major risk factors were taken into account

“Tattooing may pose a risk for this disease that can lay dormant for many, many years,” said study co-author Fritz Francois of New York University Langone Medical Centre, although he warned that the study could not produce a direct cause and effect.

About 3.2 million people in the US have hepatitis C, and many don’t know because they don’t feel ill. It is the leading cause of liver cancer and the most common reason for liver transplants in the US. Some 70 per cent of people infected will develop chronic liver disease, and up to five per cent will die from liver cancer.

34%

of people with hepatitis C had a tattoo, compared to 12 per cent of people without the infection

For the current study, researchers asked almost 2,000 people about their tattoos and hepatitis status, among other questions, at outpatient clinics at three New York area hospitals between 2004 and 2006.

They found that 34 per cent of people with hepatitis C had a tattoo, compared to 12 per cent of people without the infection.

The most common routes of infection for hepatitis C are through a blood transfusion before 1992 or a history of injected drug use. Injected drug use accounts for 60 per cent of new hepatitis cases a year, but 20 per cent have no history of either injected drug use or other exposure, according to the CDC.

Francois and his colleagues only included people with hepatitis C who did not contract it from these two other common sources.

The CDC’s Scott Holmberg recommends that people only have tattoos or piercings done by trained professionals.