Abstract
Chronic hepatitis C is curable disease. Low detection rate could be one of the reasons of poor treatment uptake. It is important to identify HCV prevalence and anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) positive patients in population by effective screening strategy such as risk-based or birth cohort screening programs. There are no national population-based estimates of the HCV prevalence in the Czech Republic (CZ). The most recent seroprevalence survey determined a prevalence of positive anti-HCV antibodies of 0.2% (in 2001). The aim of the study was to determine the seroprevalence of HCV, HCV viraemia and HCV genotype in the CZ adult population. We also estimated the number of persons living with chronic hepatitis C in CZ. The examined group included 3000 adults, 18–90 years of age enrolled in 2015. All serum samples were examined to determined anti-HCV antibodies positivity, HCV-RNA positivity and genotypes. Of the 3000 samples, 50 were found to be anti-HCV-positive, for a seroprevalence of 1.67% (2.39% in males, 0.98% in females). The overall prevalence of positive HCV RNA was 0.93%: 1.5% in males, 0.39% in females. HCV genotype (GT) 1a was determined in 25%, GT 1b in 25% and GT 3a in 46%. Since 2001, the HCV seroprevalence has increased 8-fold. The highest HCV seroprevalence occurred in males aged 30–44 years. We can estimate that there are more than 140,000 people with HCV antibodies and more than 80,000 people with chronic hepatitis C living in the CZ. The introduction of birth cohort HCV screening could be beneficial for the country.
Highlights
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a severe inflammatory necrotic liver disease that is frequently asymptomatic or with non-specific symptoms in its acute phase
47 injecting drug users were enrolled (1.6%), and this proportion corresponded to the estimated number of injecting drugs users in the Czech adult population
We found a higher proportion of the HCV genotype 3a in patients with chronic hepatitis C than in previous years
Summary
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a severe inflammatory necrotic liver disease that is frequently asymptomatic or with non-specific symptoms in its acute phase. It is the chronic form of HCV that causes significant morbidity and mortality with a risk of liver cirrhosis and subsequently hepatocellular cancer [1,2,3,4]. The disease is frequently unrecognized and undiagnosed in its acute phase, and the first clear symptoms may indicate serious disease. Hepatitis C prevalence in adults adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
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