BackgroundBesides the great importance of the issue in terms of public health, there is a lack of studies evaluating the performance of several of the currently used point of care tests (POCTs) for the detection of anti-HCV.ObjectivesTo investigate the performance of two POCTs for anti-HCV detection and to assess the impact of the reading time on diagnostic performance.Patients and MethodsA total of 307 subjects were divided into three groups (1- HCV infected; 2- other chronic liver diseases; and 3- controls). The POCTs HCV Rapid Test Bioeasy® and Imuno-Rapido HCV® were read at 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes. The sensitivity and specificity of the POCTs were calculated in relation to anti-HCV detection by chemiluminescence.ResultsValid results were obtained for all tests. When compared to the chemiluminescence, both tests showed sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 100%. No changes in the sensitivity or specificity of the tests were observed at different reading times and when patients with other chronic liver diseases were evaluated as a control group.ConclusionsThe POCTs evaluated in this study showed high sensitivity and specificity, with no change in the performance after the third minute of reading.
With the exception of mediastinal/hilar lymph node enlargement, the radiographic patterns were randomly distributed in relation to the CD4+ T cell counts.
WE WILL relate observations made during the last ten years on primary chronic inflammation of the cystic duct: these observations will concern only a few aspects of this interesting chapter in biliary pathology, long well known, but on whose theoretical and clinical meaning no full agreement has yet been reached.When we refer to the cystic duct, we include also the neck and the infundibular portion of the gall bladder, which we consider an anatomical unity.Primary chronic inflammation of the cystic duct is, in our opinion, more frequent than generally supposed.
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