Molecular Diagnostics of Hepatitis C Virus Infection

Abstract

Context Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a common blood-borne pathogen that relies heavily on nucleic acid testing for confirmation of infection. Nucleic acid tests are invaluable for the diagnosis of HCV infection and provide critical prognostic information for guiding treatment and measuring the response to antiviral therapy.

Correlation of Viral Loads with HCV Genotypes: Higher Levels of Virus Were Revealed among Blood Donors Infected with 6a Strains

“…It has been reported that patients infected with genotype 1 were more likely to have higher viral loads than those infected with genotype 2 and 3 [16], [19], [20], [21]. In agreement with these reports, we also found that donors infected with genotype 1 had higher viral loads than those infected with genotype 2 and 3.…”

Phylogenetic Analysis of Isolated HCV Strains from Tunisian Hemodialysis Patients

“…This discordant result is confirmed by the sequencing of these 5 isolates in the constant region 5′UTR. These results corroborate those of Scott et al (41) who reported that, while most assays target the highly conserved 5’ noncoding region of the HCV genome, mutations can occur in this region leading to misclassification of HCV genotypes in 5%–8% of cases. Similarly, the study of Chen et al (8) showed that the reverse line probe assay LiPA was not heterogeneous enough for use in determination of HCV subtype and cannot be used for differentiation of HCV genotypes 1a and 1b.…”

Hepatitis C virus core antigen: Analytical performances, correlation with viremia and potential applications of a quantitative, automated immunoassay

“…This is well documented in the earlier phases of infection, as confirmed on the three cases of acute hepatitis included in this study, and has been the major factor for screening blood donations also for HCV-RNA, in Italy as well as in most industrialized countries. 15,16 In our experience, HCV Ag was identified in 0.6-0.7% of patients with a weak positive result for anti-HCV and in 0.8% of cases with a negative result by RIBA-3: this figures, albeit lower than recently reported by Seiskari et al, 25 indicate that an active infection may occur also in patients with a weak antibody response. Furthermore, several reports indicated that an "occult" HCV infection is quite common among individuals with impairment of the immune response, such as hemodialyzed 26,27 and HIV-positive individuals, 28 and the possibility of a "healthy carrier" status for HCV without serological evidence of infection was demonstrated.…”