Prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection in asymptomatic anti-HIV1 negative pregnant women and their children

Abstract

The prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection was studied prospectively in pregnant women in France and their children by detection of anti-HCV with second-generation ELISA (ELISA2). In ELISA2-positive women, anti-HCV was detected with second- and third-generation RIBA (RIBA2 and RIBA3) and serum HCV RNA was detected with PCR. Among 670 women, anti-HIV1-negative, 26 (3.9%) were positive with ELISA2. RIBA2 was positive in 13 and HCV RNA was found in 10. Ten ELISA2-positive women had a further evaluation with assessment of HCV infection in their children. Among the 10 children born to the index pregnancy, only one was positive with ELISA2 and RIBA2 but negative with RIBA3 and PCR; the nine other children were ELISA2, RIBA2, RIBA3, and PCR negative. All 26 siblings (2-16 years old), of whom 14 were born to PCR-positive mothers, were ELISA2 and RIBA2 negative. We conclude that among anti-HIV1-negative pregnant women with normal serum ALT levels, the prevalence of HCV infection is relatively high but the risk for mother-to-infant transmission of HCV seems to be low.

Mother-to-infant transmission of hepatitis C virus: A prospective study

“…Furthermore, the presence of HCV-RNA in these mothers was well associated with positivity of RIBA-2. Similar results were also found in a previous study of anti-HCV positive pregnant women [12]. Our resuits indicated that most mothers confirmed to be anti-HCV-positive by RIBA-2 were HCV carriers, while ELISA-2 positivity with a low titre (ODI <2.0) might represent a false-positive reaction.…”

“…We found 3 cases of mother-to-infant transmission among the 31 (9.7%) in the present study. This rate of the transmission was somewhat higher than that found in similar reports in which infants born to anti-HCV positive and anti-HIV negative mothers were evaluated prospectively [11,12,21,27]. Some investigators have indicated a high level of viraemia in mothers to be a possible risk factor of HCV transmission [tl, 16].…”

“…In preliminary studies based on the first-generation assay for anti-HCV, hardly any cases of mother-to-infant transmission were observed [19,25,26]. Recent studies using the second-generation anti-HCV assay and the PCR procedure, which are more sensitive methods for detecting HCV infection, have shown widely divergent transmission rates [8,9,11,12,21,24,27]. Several factors such as maternal characteristics, sample size and variability in PCR technique may account for the varying results reported.…”

“…In addition, HCV transmission from generation to generation is thought to contribute to the long persistence of HCV in the community [7]. Most recent studies have suggested that transmission of HCV from mothers to infants can occur, but is uncommon [4,9,10,12,16,20,21,27]. Co-existent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in mothers [4,6,15,24,25] or large amounts of circulating HCV-RNA in mothers [11,16] have been suspected to predispose the infants to HCV infection.…”

La transmission materno-fœtale du virus de l’hépatite C : actualités sur l’intérêt de la césarienne

“…La prévalence d'anticorps anti-VHC chez les femmes enceintes est identique à celle de la population générale, et d'environ 1 % (0,3 à 3,9 %) [1][2][3]. Parmi elles, 70 à 80 % sont virémiques (ARN-VHC positives) [4,5].…”