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Lynchburg, VA - Doctors are warning Americans of a silent and potentially deadly disease that could be lurking in their bodies. This hidden killer is something you don't hear about very often, even though nearly 4 million people in the U.S. have it.

Hepatitis C is not usually what comes to mind when people think about a life-threatening illness. But doctors say that's exactly why the virus is so dangerous.

"The problem with Hepatitis C is that most people who have it, don't know they have it. So there are about 4 million people in the United States with Hepatitis C, 75% of them don't know they have it," said Dr. Robert Brennan, an infectious disease specialist in Lynchburg.

Causing no symptoms and no sickness, Hepatitis C can lie dormant in a person's body for decades.

"They were exposed 30 years ago, 40 years ago in the 1960s, 1970s, never had any symptoms and don't have any symptoms now," said Brennan.

Brennan says this chronic viral infection is now killing more Americans every year than HIV.

"If we don't do something with Hepatitis C epidemic, it's predicted that about a million people in the United States will die of end-stage liver disease."

When a person is infected with Hepatitis C, the virus settles in the liver. Over time, it causes small changes, that mostly go unnoticed. But those small changes can eventually lead to big problems.

"Of the people who have Hepatitis C, most of them will not have a problem with it, but about 20% of people will develop Cirrhosis, which is end-stage, serious, liver disease, or liver cancer," said Brennan.

Doctors say baby boomers: people born between 1945 and 1965, are most at risk.

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Hidden Killer Part 1: Why Doctors are Urging People to be Tested for Hepatitis C

Killer Virus
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Killer Virus - Video

TORONTO Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne will discuss ways to contain a deadly pig virus today with her federal, provincial and territorial counterparts.

Wynne, who also serves as Ontarios agriculture minister, is expected to explore a possible national strategy to contain the virus.

The highly contagious porcine epidemic diarrhea virus continued to spread in Ontario Wednesday as officials confirmed a fourth case in the province.

Officials said two new cases were confirmed in Chatham-Kent and at a farm in Norfolk County on the north shore of Lake Erie.

Spokeswoman Susan Murray of Ontarios Ministry of Agriculture says authorities expect to find more cases since PED is so easy to transmit.

Officials stress that there is no risk to human health or food safety.

A group representing Ontario hog farmers has said the virus is spread through contact with manure, which can cling to trucks, trailers, clothing and boots.

Canadas first case of PED was discovered last week on a farm in southwestern Ontario, and officials say hundreds of piglets have died from the disease.

The virus has also decimated herds in the U.S., and Canadian hog producers have said they fear the same could happen here.

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Deadly pig virus spreads in Ontario

Once again, a cruise ship is limping into port carrying hundreds of passengers and crew sickened by norovirus. But what exactly is norovirus, and why does it spread so easily on cruise ships?

Today (Jan. 29), the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Explorer of the Seas returned to port in Bayonne, N.J., after a suspected outbreak of norovirus struck almost 600 of the vessel's passengers and crew, according to NBC News.

Norovirus consists of a group of viruses that cause gastrointestinal illness in humans (the viruses are not known to infect other animals). The norovirus causes about 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is blamed for as many as 800 U.S. deaths each year. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

Norovirus is named for Norwalk, Ohio, where the first confirmed outbreak was recorded, in 1968. People sometimes refer to a norovirus infection as "stomach flu," even though the virus is not related to influenza.

How norovirus spreads

The notoriety of norovirus comes from the ease with which it spreads from one person to another: You can catch it by ingesting food or drink that's been contaminated, or by touching any contaminated surface, then touching your nose, mouth or eyes. The virus is also aerosolized, or sprayed into the air, when an infected person vomits or flushes a toilet, and can spread when a person inhales the virus.

Unlike many germs, norovirus isn't easily destroyed by soap and water and it can survive on surfaces for at least a week, in water for months. Alcohol doesn't have much of an effect on norovirus, either, rendering alcohol-based hand sanitizers relatively useless.

Bleach-based cleaning solutions will destroy norovirus, however, and washing with soap and water will remove the virus from your hands, but might not destroy it. The virus' sheer toughness and durability helps explain why it survives so well on cruise ships, where it can spread easily from one person to another.

But norovirus doesn't just haunt cruise ships. Outbreaks of the contagion have been reported in other places where large numbers of people share relatively close quarters, including nursing homes, hospitals, scout jamborees and even restaurants where an infected person vomited.

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What Is Norovirus?

In the year 541, as many of 50 million people died of the plague. The plague swept through Europe, northern Africa, parts of Asia, possibly leading to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Until now, though, no one knew for sure exactly what caused that pandemic.

Ancient teeth have given scientists the material to confirm the exact bacteria strain that caused the plague by reconstructing its DNA. Finding the teeth was key: when housing developers accidentally uncovered a burial site outside of Munich, archaeologists confirmed that the graves dated to the time of the plague.

12 Diseases That Just Wont Quit

They found some that had multiple individuals buried together, which is often times indicative of an infectious disease, Northern Arizona University evolutionary biologist David Wagner told National Public Radio. And so in this particular case, we examined material from two different victims. One of those victims was buried together with another adult and a child, so its presumed that they all may have died of the plague at the same time.

The dental pulp inside their teeth contained enough traces of blood to find the DNA of the plague bacteria.

After sequencing the DNA, scientists were able to track the spread of the disease. They think the bacteria started in China, jumping from rodents to humans and that it wasnt related to the Black Death, as was previously believed.

Photos: Decoding King Tuts DNA

These results show that rodent species worldwide represent important reservoirs for the repeated emergence of diverse lineages of Y pestis into human populations, the authors wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

If it werent for modern medicine and antibiotics, the pathogen could cause another pandemic, Northern Arizona University microbiologist Paul Keim told NPR.

Photo: Graduate student Jennifer Klunk of McMaster University examines a tooth used to decode the genome of the ancient plague. Credit: McMaster University

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Ancient Teeth Reveal Plague's DNA