Diagnosis of hepatitis C virus infection by enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay and reverse transcriptase‐nested polymerase chain reaction: A comparative evaluation

Abstract

SummaryHepatitis C virus is one of the main causes of chronic hepatitis in developing countries. The current study was to evaluate the efficacy of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay third generation (ELISA-3) for detection of antibodies to hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) in comparison with reverse transcriptasenested polymerase chain reaction (RT-nested PCR) to detect HCV RNA for the diagnosis of hepatitis C virus. Serum samples were collected from 151 chronic hepatitis C patients and 50 healthy individuals. All samples were tested for anti-HCV antibodies using ELISA-3 and HCV RNA by RT-nested PCR. Of the 151,120 (78.9%) were found to be seropositive by ELISA-3, and 148 (98%) patients were HCV RNA positive, 118 (78.1%) were positives for both, 30 (19.9%) were positive for ELISA-3 and negative for RT-PCR, and 2 cases (1.3%) were positive for RT-nested PCR and negative for ELISA-3. The sensitivity and the specificity for the detection of HCV were absolute when the two techniques were combined. In conclusion, ELISA-3 is a suitable assay for routine screening for anti-HCV. RT-nested PCR for HCV is a value for the early detection of viremic, anti-HCV negative cases; this may be of importance in treatment of hepatitis C.

Prediction of viral loads for diagnosis of Hepatitis C infection in human plasma samples using Raman spectroscopy coupled with partial least squares regression analysis

“…More recently, ‘real‐time’ PCR techniques have been developed . A comparison of ELISA and PCR methods has been carried out, leading to the conclusion that PCR based techniques are the most reliable, although they are very expensive, time consuming, laborious, and less commonly available. There is a need, therefore, to develop a new, reliable, efficient, rapid, automated, cost effective, non‐invasive, and biochemical label free diagnosis method to screen the whole community for effective disease management.…”

On-chip purification and detection of hepatitis C virus RNA from human plasma

“…Virological tests have become essentials in all the main aspects of HCV clinical management, including diagnosis, treatment planning, and response-to-treatment evaluation. These tests include: (a) ELISA serological tests to detect HCV antibodies, (b) NAT (nucleic acid amplification techniques) assays to detect and quantify HCV RNA, and (c) genotyping [9]. Since serological assays cannot distinguish between patients with active infection and those who have acquired immunity, NAT tests for HCV are commonly used as a marker of current infection, as predictor of infectivity, and to monitor the efficacy of antiviral therapy [10,11].…”

Detection of hepatitis C virus (HCV) among health care providers in an Egyptian university hospital: different diagnostic modalities

“…This is coupled with absence of an efficient culture system for HCV, denoting the necessity of confirmatory nucleic acid amplification technology techniques. 24 Others claimed for a lower sensitivity and specificity of serum Ab ELISA, 25 whereas, studies done in subSaharian Africa displayed high false positive ELISA Ab results in African populations. 26 However, ELISA is still a recommended test for screening as it is a cheap and easy test.…”