Clinico‐pathological significance of hepatitis C virus core antigen levels in chronic infection

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus core antigen (HCVcoreAg) may be measured in serum with a sensitive, recently validated assay. Beyond its value as a marker of viral infection, there are little data on its relation with clinical, histological, and virological parameters. In this study, the significance of HCVcoreAg levels was studied in a prospective cohort of 114 patients with chronic hepatitis C. HCVcoreAg was measured by a commercial chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay. Clinical and virological data included quantitative HCV-RNA, HCV genotype, ALT, GGT, IL28B rs12979860 polymorphism as well as liver histology parameters. HCVcoreAg levels were correlated significantly with HCV-RNA (r=0.56; P<0.0001) but also with ALT levels (r=0.258; P<0.01) and liver necroinflammatory activity (r=0.205; P<0.04). Patients harbouring HCV genotype 3 showed lower levels of HCVcoreAg than both genotype 1 and two patients. In genotype 3, a direct correlation between steatosis and HCVcoreAg was found. Levels of HCVcoreAg also varied according to the IL28B genotype. These data suggest that the evaluation of HCVcoreAg serum levels may provide relevant data for the baseline clinical evaluation of chronic hepatitis C patients. HCVcoreAg serum levels may be a useful tool to further the understanding of chronic hepatitis C pathobiology.

The Correlation between Hepatitis C Core Antigen and Hepatitis C Virus RNA Levels with Respect to Human Immunodeficiency Virus Status, Hepatitis C Virus Genotype and Interferon-Lambda-4 Polymorphism

“…In the context of HCV/HIV coinfection, emerging data have suggested that multiple conditions, including increases in profibrogenic cytokine expression and secretion, enhancement of oxidative stress production, and increases in hepatocyte apoptosis all contribute to accelerated fibrosis [32]. In contrast to previous studies, our results did not demonstrate the correlation between HCVcAg concentration and liver inflammatory activity and liver fibrosis [33]. …”

The Utility of Automated HCV Core Antigen Assay as an Alternative to PCR in Chronic HCV Egyptian Patients

“…Concluded that the correlation coefficient between HCV-Ag and bDNA was 0.713 and this could be explained by that these results were based on calculations with absolute and not logarithmically transformed values. We used logarithmic transformation of HCV RNA values as wide range of the previous studies used it which is also common practice in the clinical assessment of chronic hepatitis HCV core Ag levels were correlated also with ALT levels (0.205; P < 0.04) and this in agreement with Durante-Mangoni et al [14]. who studied in a prospective cohort of 114 patients with chronic hepatitis whoever this study included genotype 1,2 and 3 only not in genotype 4 as in our study.…”

Hepatitis C core antigen highly correlated to HCV RNA

“…and Durante‐Mangoni et al. [9,13], both showed stronger correlation of genotype 2 (r = 0.77 and r = 0.65 respectively) with HCV molecular assay than genotype 1 (r = 0.72 and r = 0.53 respectively). Of note, the correlation coefficients of both genotype 1 and genotype 2 in both of these studies are considerably lower than our study, indicating there remains inconsistency amongst studies in the efficacy of HCV‐Ag immunoassays in genotyping HCV RNA positive patients.…”