The assessment of molecular HCV RNA test results on anti HCV seropositive people

Abstract

Objective: In this study, HCV-RNA levels of patients with positive values of anti-HCV were determined and the relationship between gender and recovering after acute infection, chronicity the patients’ response to therapy were evaluated by measuring the quantity of HCV-RNA viral loads.

Methods: The HCV-RNA levels of patients with positive values of anti-HCV were evaluated retrospectively using laboratory records in Cumhuriyet University Research and Practice Hospital between January 2005 and December 2009.

Results: In this study, the HCV RNA results of 347 patients were evaluated. We determined that Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection showed high rates of chronicity (79.0%) and some patients showed recovery (21.0%) without treatment. HCV-RNA test results were positive in 76.1% of the women and 82.9% of the men and there was no correlation between gender and HCV-RNA test sero positivity (p>0.05). When we evaluated the HCV-RNA results of the 185 patients receiving treatment, we observed that the rate of positive response to treatment was 56.2% and 39.5% of the patients did not respond to treatment. The relapse rate was 4.3%. Response rates to therapy were not correlated with gender (p>0.05).

Conclusions: Patients infected with Hepatitis C virus have high rates of chronic infection and the rate of response to treatment is still not at desired levels. Therefore, we believe that education concerning routes of transmission, prevention and taking all necessary measures to prevent contamination are of utmost importance.