Hepatitis C core antigen: a simple predictive marker for treatment response to the new direct-acting antiviral drugs in chronic HCV Egyptian patients

Abstract Background Successful eradication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) has great impact on the prognosis HCV-related complications and associated mortality. The development new direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAAs) revolutionized treatment HCV infection. core antigen (HCVcAg) is a recently developed marker that displayed good correlation with RNA assays. Our main objectives were to correlate between serum levels HCVcAg loads in chronic patients as well explore potential value assay predicting response DAAs. study enrolled total 280 HCV-infected scheduled start regimen for by all-oral, interferon-free According viral load, studied individuals arranged into three groups corresponding mild, moderate, sever viremia. Serum level was determined ELISA technique quantified using real-time PCR system. assays performed times all participants: prior initiation treatment, at end (week 12), 3 months post-treatment cessation 24). Results A statistically significant difference baseline among different viremia detected ( P < 0.001). There positive values cases 0.05) coefficient 0.752, 0.976, 1.00 respectively severe groups. 92.9% (260/280) achieved sustained virologic response, 3.6% (10/280) non-responders, had recurrent viremia/relapse regards RT-PCR results. Conclusion promising alternative assay. ELISAs proved excellent correlations levels. Moreover, can be introduced simple highly specific tool monitoring DAA regimens particularly low-resource settings.