Diagnosis of hepatitis C virus infection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and reverse transcriptase-nested polymerase chain reaction: A comparative evaluation

✍ Scribed by Menha Swellam; Magda Sayed Mahmoud; Adel Abdel-Fatah Ali

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 101 KB
• Volume: 63
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1521-6543
• DOI: 10.1002/iub.469

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus is one of the main causes of chronic hepatitis in developing countries. The current study was to evaluate the efficacy of the enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay third generation (ELISA‐3) for detection of antibodies to hepatitis C virus (anti‐HCV) in comparison with reverse transcriptase‐nested polymerase chain reaction (RT‐nested PCR) to detect HCV RNA for the diagnosis of hepatitis C virus. Serum samples were collected from 151 chronic hepatitis C patients and 50 healthy individuals. All samples were tested for anti‐HCV antibodies using ELISA‐3 and HCV RNA by RT‐nested PCR. Of the 151,120 (78.9%) were found to be seropositive by ELISA‐3, and 148 (98%) patients were HCV RNA positive, 118 (78.1%) were positives for both, 30 (19.9%) were positive for ELISA‐3 and negative for RT‐PCR, and 2 cases (1.3%) were positive for RT‐nested PCR and negative for ELISA‐3. The sensitivity and the specificity for the detection of HCV were absolute when the two techniques were combined. In conclusion, ELISA‐3 is a suitable assay for routine screening for anti‐HCV. RT‐nested PCR for HCV is a value for the early detection of viremic, anti‐HCV negative cases; this may be of importance in treatment of hepatitis C. © 2011 IUBMB IUBMB Life, 63(6): 430–434, 2011