Objective. To identify the risk factors for HCV infection within married couples in Egypt. Methods. In 2008 Egypt conducted its first nationally representative survey of HCV prevalence. 11126 of the 12780 individuals aged 15-59 year who were sampled agreed to participate and provided information via a questionnaire about demographic and behavioural characteristics and blood for HCV antibody and...

The core antigen of the hepatitis C virus (HCV Ag) presents an alternative marker to HCV RNA when screening patients for HCV viremia. This study sought to evaluate the utility of HCV Ag as a marker to assess active HCV infection in individuals residing in an HCV-endemic area. From 298 HCV-seropositive individuals evaluated for the presence of anti-HCV antibody, HCV Ag and HCV RNA, anti-HCV anti...

BACKGROUND Several studies have postulated a causal link between hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and renal diseases through the induction of cryoglobulinaemia. However, the detection of viral antigens within kidneys of HCV-infected patients has proved to be difficult. We studied a cohort of Chinese HCV-infected patients with various glomerulonephritis (GN) in an attempt to detect HCV antigens...

BACKGROUND The simultaneous detection of antigen and antibody was originally described for the early detection of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The same approach was applied to detect the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The aim of this work was to use the antigen and antibody combination assay for the detection of HCV and HIV infections in expatriates in Eastern Saudi Arabia. METHODOLOGY T...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES We characterized HCV antibody prevalence, viral persistence, genotype and liver disease prevalence among IDUs in Chennai, India as the study of the association of HIV with each of these states is important and there are no data available. METHODS Between 2005-2006, 1158 IDUs were recruited and followed semi-annually. All were tested for HCV antibodies at baseline; a ...

Approximately 3% of the world population is infected by HCV, which represents a major global health challenge. Almost 400 different scientific reports present immunological data related to T cell and antibody epitopes derived from HCV literature. Analysis of all HCV-related epitope hosted in the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), a repository of freely accessible immune epitope data, revealed more...

We have completed a phase 1 safety and immunogenicity trial with hepatitis C virus (HCV) envelope glycoproteins, E1 and E2, with MF59 adjuvant as a candidate vaccine. Neutralizing activity to HCV genotype 1a was detected in approximately 25% of the vaccinee sera. In this study, we evaluated vaccinee sera from poor responders as a potential source of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) of HCV i...

INTRODUCTION Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a hepatotropic virus causing a variety of extrahepatic immunological manifestations and is a risk factor of a variety of extrahepatic diseases, such as mixed cryoglobulinemia and membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN), which is the most common glomerulonephritis. The aim of this study was to evaluate renal involvement in HCV-infected pa...

Liver disease caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) may cause significant morbidity and mortality among patients with end stage renal disease under maintenance hemodialysis (HD). The anti-HCV antibody detection is the current method used to detect HCV infection. However, there are many seronegative HCV infections. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction for HCV RNA provides a better diagnos...

OBJECTIVE Epidemiological studies present oral crack use as a potential independent risk factor for hepatitis C virus (HCV) status, yet actual HCV transmission pathways via crack use have not been evidenced. To this end, this exploratory study sought to detect HCV on crack-use paraphernalia used by street crack users. METHODS Crack-use paraphernalia within 60 min of use was collected from 51 ...