Hepatitis C: An overview of its laboratory diagnosis

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a heterogeneous virus with multiple genotypes. It has a slowly progressive course with a fatal outcome. Chronic infection with HCV is a major cause of liver cancer. Diagnosing the disease early at an early stage is necessary so as to prevent its progression to chronicity. Screening for anti-HCV IgG antibody can be done by a number of immunoassays but at the same time it becomes difficult to differentiate between acute and chronic infection. To overcome this problem nucleic acid testing for detecting HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) can be used as the mainstay for diagnosing the infection.