Authors: El-Sherif, Assem; Elbahrawy, Ashraf; Aboelfotoh, Atef; Abdelkarim, Magdy; Saied Mohammad, Abdel-Gawad; Abdallah, Abdallah Mahmoud; Mostafa, Sadek; Elmestikawy, Amr; Elwassief, Ahmed; Salah, Mohamed; Abdelbaseer, Mohamed Ali; Abdelwahab, Kouka Saadeldin

Source: Hemodialysis International, Volume 16, Number 3, 1 July 2012 , pp. 420-427(8)

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Abstract:

<title type="main">Abstract</title>

Routine serological testing for hepatitis C virus (<fc>HCV</fc>) infection among hemodialysis (<fc>HD</fc>) patients is currently recommended. A dilemma existed on the value of serology because some investigators reported a high rate of false-negative serologic testing. In this study, we aimed to detect the false-negative rate of anti-<fc>HCV</fc> among <fc>E</fc>gyptian <fc>HD</fc> patients. Seventy-eight <fc>HD</fc> patients, negative for anti-<fc>HCV</fc>, anti-<fc>HIV</fc>, and hepatitis B surface antigen, were tested for <fc>HCV RNA</fc> by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (<fc>RT-PCR</fc>). In the next step, the viral load was quantified by real-time <fc>PCR</fc> in <fc>RT-PCR</fc>-positive patients. Risk factors for <fc>HCV</fc> infection, as well as clinical and biochemical indicators of liver disease, were compared between false-negative and true-negative anti-<fc>HCV HD</fc> patients. The frequency of false-negative anti-<fc>HCV</fc> was 17.9%. Frequency of blood transfusion, duration of HD, dialysis at multiple centers, and diabetes mellitus were not identified as risk factors for <fc>HCV</fc> infection. The frequency of false-negative results had a linear relation to the prevalence of <fc>HCV</fc> infection in the <fc>HD</fc> units. Timely identification of <fc>HCV</fc> within dialysis units is needed in order to lower the risk of <fc>HCV</fc> spread within the <fc>HD</fc> units. The high false-negative rate of anti-<fc>HCV</fc> among <fc>HD</fc> patients in our study justifies testing of a large scale of patients for precious assessment of effectiveness of nucleic acid amplification technology testing in screening <fc>HD</fc> patient.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-4758.2011.00662.x

Publication date: 2012-07-01

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• In this Subject: Urology
• By this author: El-Sherif, Assem ;  Elbahrawy, Ashraf ;  Aboelfotoh, Atef ;  Abdelkarim, Magdy ;  Saied Mohammad, Abdel-Gawad ;  Abdallah, Abdallah Mahmoud ;  Mostafa, Sadek ;  Elmestikawy, Amr ;  Elwassief, Ahmed ;  Salah, Mohamed ;  Abdelbaseer, Mohamed Ali ;  Abdelwahab, Kouka Saadeldin

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