Validation and Sensitivity of HCV Core Antigen in Patient with HCV Infection in Diagnosis and Monitoring Post DAA Therapy

Abstract

Abstract Background Successful eradication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) has great impact on the prognosis of HCV-related complications and the associated mortality. The development of the new directacting antiviral drugs (DAAs) has revolutionized the treatment of HCV infection. HCV core antigen (HCVcAg) is a recently developed marker that displayed a good correlation with HCV RNA assays, Aim of the Work to evaluate the clinical utility of hepatitis C virus core antigen in detection of chronic hepatitis C virus at pre-treatment and eradication of HCV post DAAs treatment using core antigen ELISA and detection of its sensitivity and specificity in comparison to HCV RNA, Subjects and Methods This was Cross sectional study, carried out at El Galaa and Kobri Al koba military hospitals on 90 Egyptian individuals, divided into 3 groups: (Group A); included 30 healthy individual with HCV Ab and HCV RNA negative as a control, (Group B); included 30 patients with chronic HCV infection in pre-treatment, (Group C): included 30 patients who have received anti HCV treatment (DAAs) 12 weeks post treatment, Result There were insignificant correlation between laboratory parameters of the patient group with HCV-cAg before treatment, Conclusion Fast and immediate results, lower costs of the technique are some of the main advantages of HCVcAg. Therefore, ELISA for HCV-cAg can replace the high sensitivity HCV RNA molecular assay to confirm the presence of HCV infection and to monitor treatment outcome especially in low-income countries with limited resources,