BACKGROUND Chemiluminescence immunoassay (CIA) is used to detect hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody status on the basis of signal-to-cutoff (S/Co) ratios. Positive results of antibody to HCV (anti-HCV) are followed by either recombinant immunoblot assay (RIBA) to confirm anti-HCV positivity or reverse transcription (RT)-PCR to detect viremia. We hypothesized that by analyzing S/Co ratios, we coul...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is known to infect peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of patients with chronic hepatitis C, but the proportion of HCV-infected circulating cells is not detectable by conventional reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and the pathogenic significance of HCV lymphotropism is still unclear. Therefore, we have devised an in situ RT-PCR technique usin...

Effective control measures to reduce the spread of HBV in dialysis units have had a major beneficial impact on the management of patients with chronic renal failure (Table 3). The exact impact of chronic HBV infection on graft and patient survival following RT remains unclear, and the outcome may depend in great part on the severity of the pre-RT liver disease. RT should only be offered to HBV-...

A newly developed real-time RT-polymerase chain reaction assay for quantitation of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA in human plasma and serum was applied. A pair of primers and a probe (molecular beacon) were designed that are specific for the recognition of a highly conservative 5'-non-coding region (5'-NCR) in HCV genome. HCV real-time RT-PCR assay had a sensitivity of 1000 RNA copies per reaction...

objective: despite sensitive antibody based blood donor screening, infection can be transmitted during window period. therefore sensetive methods bosed on nucleic acid tests (nats) have been considered. the aim of this project was to design a more sensitive method for detection of pcr products and diagnosis of hiv-1/hcv co-infection accurately. materials and methods: after designing specific p...

BACKGROUND The clinical significance of a single assessment of circulating hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA and its relation to the level of intrahepatic HCV RNA remains unclear. AIMS To investigate the relation between intrahepatic HCV levels and clinicopathological characteristics of chronic HCV infection. PATIENTS Ninety eight consecutive patients with chronic HCV infection were studied; none...

background and aims: hepatitis c virus is one of the viral infections transmitted by blood transfusion. patients with thalassaemia frequently need blood transfusion and are in danger of hcv infection. in most cases of infection (85%) the virus evades the immune system and establishes a chronic infection that may lead to cirrhosis and liver carcinoma. liver is the main site of hcv replication hc...

The natural history of hepatitis C virus (HCV) among patients after renal transplantation (RT) remains incompletely defined. We conducted a systematic review of the published medical literature on the impact of hepatitis C antibody status on survival of patients who received RT. We used the random effects model of DerSimonian and Laird to generate a summary estimate of the relative risk (RR) fo...