Please respond to student disucssion post in APA 7th edition, 3 sources and mini

Please respond to student disucssion post in APA 7th edition, 3 sources and minimuim of 250 words:
Hepatitis is a viral infection of the body that primarily affects the liver. There are 5 commonly seen strains of this virus in humans, hepatitis’ A through E, with the B and C strains of this virus being the most commonly seen (Huether et al., 2020). Seeing that Mike tested positive for Hepatitis C, it is not surprising that his liver panels were abnormal.
Hepatitis C is a strain of the hepatitis virus that is often transmitted through a parenteral route and is commonly seen in IV drug users, especially of the illicit type, due to the uncleanliness and sharing of needles. So hearing Mark’s confession of currently using illicit IV drugs for the past 8 weeks makes me think that this is the likely cause of infection. The time lines also line up as the incubation period of hepatitis C is 35-72 days, which lines up with Mark’s 8 weeks of IV drug use (Huether et al., 2020). Hepatitis C is an RNA virus that infects the liver and replicates within the hepatocytes, causing cellular necrosis in the liver. This cellular death can be from a number of causes, with one of the main causes being immune related cytolysis. This cellular damage can present as cholestasis and jaundice due to the damage of bile ducts. Other symptoms are general malaise, fatigue, darkened urine, fever, cough, tenderness of the abdomen, and clay colored stool (Huether et al., 2020).
Acute Hepatitis C is known to cause altered values on liver functions tests, as is seen in Mike’s case. In addition to this, Mike is also on a number of medications including Depakote, which contains Valproic Acid. Valproic Acid has shown to cause hepatotoxicity and elevated ALT in individuals, similar to Mike panels (LiverTox, 2012). Clonazepam is generally considered to be a non-hepatotoxic drug, however, recent case studies have found isolated incidents of clonazepam causing increased liver dysfunction in individuals who already had liver dysfunction (Kishimoto et al., 2019). Given this recent information, clonazepam could be a contributing factor in Mike’s altered liver levels as he also has hepatitis C and is on other hepatotoxic drugs, so the clonazepam could have had a similar effect as in this case study. In addition, Prozac is also found to have negative side effects on the liver in rare cases (LiverTox, 2012). So between Mike’s diagnosis of Hepatitis C and the use of depakote, which is known to be hepatotoxic, along with other drugs which have shown to be potentially harmful to the liver in rare cases, his liver is being seriously compromised and he runs the serious risk of developing liver failure.