HCV and PCR negativity

Clinical guidelines on the management of hepatitis C

“…Several studies have shown that reactivity with c100-3 or 5-1-1 alone is rarely associated with PCR positivity and can be regarded as falsely positive 8688-90 The majority of patients with lone antibody to c33 and about half of those with antibody to c22 will be PCR positive and therefore represent true positive results 8688 89 91 92 …”

Serological Studies and Hepatitis C Virus RNA in Serum Samples from Blood Donors with Indeterminate Results in Second-Generation Recombinant Immunoblot Assay

“…Several studies have shown that a high proportion of the RIBA2-confirmed, anti-HCV-positive blood donors are infectious [1] or show HCV-RNA in serum, as detected by RT-PCR [2][3][4], However, the percentage of viremic donors never reached 100% in these studies. Furthermore, it has been reported that a significant proportion of the anti-HCV-positive.…”

Prevalence of hepatitis‐C virus RNA in serum and throat washings of children with chronic hepatitis

“…Since, in contrast to PCR testing, the ALT values of a patient may be easily determined, we have investigated whether perhaps this laboratory parameter allows a judgement of the virus load of patients, when other causes for the hepatitis than HCV are excluded. Until now conflicting results have been published, showing in some cases either that there is a correlation between virus presence in serum and increased ALT levels [Irving et al, 1992;Crawford et al, 19921 or that the presence of HCV in serum in the course of a chronic hepatitis C infection can be associated also with completely normal ALT values [Alberti et al, 1992;Zanetti et al, 19901. In our patients, it was shown that virus presence in serum detectable by PCR was not significantly associated with increased serum ALT levels and that normal ALT values were also obtained in HCV PCR-positive patients.…”