Hepatitis C core antigen in Polish blood donors

Abstract

The HCVcAg test proved to be feasible for routine screening in the Polish Blood Transfusion Service. Six HCVcAg RR/anti-HCV-negative donors were identified. The calculated residual risk in this study of donors in the preseroconversion window was 45 per million. Mandatory testing of every blood and plasma donation for HCVcAg or HCV RNA was recommended as of January 2, 2002.

Significance of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core antigen as an alternative plasma marker of active HCV infection

“…Further, in order to reduce the residual risk of HCV transmission through blood banks it was made mandatory for European Blood banks in January 2, 2002 to test every blood and plasma donation for either HCVcAg or HCV RNA. 11 In previously reported studies, HCVcAg was detected one day later than HCV RNA in patients undergoing seroconversion but the sensitivity of this assay did not match the sensitivity shown by a single donor nucleic acid testing (NAT) in detecting early HCV infection. 12,13 However, HCV ( w w w The box represents the middle 50% of the data or the interquartile range (IQR) (25 th to 75 th percentile).…”

Simultaneous Detection of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Core Antigen and Anti-HCV Antibodies Improves the Early Detection of HCV Infection

“…However, when an early diagnosis of HCV infection is required, such as in emergency situations (health care worker exposures) (47), in blood screening to reduce the residual risk of transmission through blood (5) or grafts (9,24), or as a pretreatment screening for at-risk populations, two diagnostic approaches based on the detection of the HCV RNA or HCV core Ag are currently available. The prevention of viral transmission by blood, thanks to the implementation of these methods for routine blood screening, has been reported (10,14,25,39,40,44). However, since nucleic acid testing could not totally prevent HCV transmission, anti-HCV serologic screening must be continued (6,22,33) and viral screening approaches can be implemented only as supplemental tests.…”

“…To further reduce the residual risk (2,5,16,18,36,37,41,48), nucleic acid testing (NAT) for HCV RNA was introduced in several high-income countries (2,14,15,21,30,39). In some countries, an assay for the detection of HCV core antigen (Ag) by use of the enzyme immunoassay (EIA) technology has been chosen as an alternative to NAT for the early diagnosis of infection (1,8,25,38). In addition, some authors emphasized the clinical advantage of HCV core Ag quantification as a direct marker of viral replication in the chronic phase of infection (4) and as a relevant marker for predicting and monitoring the response to therapy (7,29,31).…”

Recommendations on hepatitis C screening for adults

“…The proportion of RNA-positive, active HCV infection cases ranged from 0% to 89.7% among positive antibody-based assays [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][45][46][47][48][51][52][53][54] and from 0% to 100% among antigen-based assays. 39,44,49,50 Only three studies conducted confirmatory polymerase chain reaction on samples that tested negative for HCV antibody or antigen. The proportion of negative anti-HCV assays that were confirmed with polymerase chain reaction to be RNA negative ranged from 73.7% to 99.7% for two antibody assays 29,39 and 89.7% in one antigen assay.…”