Usefulness of the Hepatitis C Virus Core Antigen Assay for Screening of a Population Undergoing Routine Medical Checkup

We studied the usefulness of the recently designed Trak-C assay for the detection and quantification of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core antigen (Ag) for the screening of HCV infection in 4,201 subjects selected from 74,150 consecutive volunteers undergoing routine medical checkups. Subjects were se...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Clinical Microbiology 2005-04, Vol.43 (4), p.1722-1726
Main Authors: Gaudy, Catherine, Thevenas, Catherine, Tichet, Jean, Mariotte, Nicole, Goudeau, Alain, Dubois, Frédéric
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Diagnostic Tests, Routine
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hepacivirus - immunology
Hepacivirus - isolation & purification
Hepatitis C - diagnosis
Hepatitis C - virology
Hepatitis C Antibodies - blood
Hepatitis C virus
Humans
Immunoenzyme Techniques - methods
Infectious diseases
Male
Mass Screening
Medical sciences
Microbiology
Middle Aged
Miscellaneous
RNA, Viral - blood
Viral Core Proteins - blood
Viral Load
Virology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We studied the usefulness of the recently designed Trak-C assay for the detection and quantification of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) core antigen (Ag) for the screening of HCV infection in 4,201 subjects selected from 74,150 consecutive volunteers undergoing routine medical checkups. Subjects were selected for screening because they had risk factors (group II, n = 321) and/or elevated alanine transaminase activity (group I, n = 3847). Initially, the anti-HCV antibody assay and the Trak-C assay were performed on each patient. Subsequently, the Trak-C assay was performed only when the anti-HCV enzyme immune assay (EIA) was positive. Positive samples were further evaluated for anti-HCV antibodies by a third-generation strip immunoblot assay and for HCV RNA. Four samples (1.2%) from group II and 113 (2.9%) from group I were anti-HCV EIA positive. We also tested 33 subjects who previously tested positive for anti-HCV in our medical center. Among the 150 anti-HCV EIA-positive samples, the HCV core Ag result was in accord with the HCV RNA result in 146 cases (97.3%). When the EIA result was positive, the HCV core Ag concentration and the HCV RNA load were correlated (r² = 0.78; P < 0.001). Four samples with low viral loads were Trak-C negative but HCV RNA positive. Among the 2,395 anti-HCV EIA-negative serum samples collected during the first part of the study, 17 (0.7%) were found to contain very low levels of HCV core Ag (
ISSN:0095-1137
1098-660X
DOI:10.1128/JCM.43.4.1722-1726.2005