PLoS ONE (Jan 2021)

Anti-HCV antibody titer highly predicts HCV viremia in patients with hepatitis B virus dual-infection.

  • Hung-Yin Liu,
  • Yi-Hung Lin,
  • Pei-Ju Lin,
  • Pei-Chien Tsai,
  • Shu-Fen Liu,
  • Ying-Chou Huang,
  • Jia-Jiun Tsai,
  • Ching-I Huang,
  • Ming-Lun Yeh,
  • Po-Cheng Liang,
  • Zu-Yau Lin,
  • Chia-Yen Dai,
  • Jee-Fu Huang,
  • Wan-Long Chuang,
  • Chung-Feng Huang,
  • Ming-Lung Yu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254028
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 7
p. e0254028

Abstract

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Background/aimsHepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection is diagnosed by the presence of antibody to HCV and/or HCV RNA. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of anti-HCV titer (S/CO ratio) in predicting HCV viremia in patients with or without hepatitis B virus (HBV) dual infection.MethodsAnti-HCV seropositive patients who were treatment-naïve consecutively enrolled. Anti-HCV antibodies were detected using a commercially chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay. HCV RNA was detected by real-time PCR method.ResultsA total of 1321 including1196 mono-infected and 125 HBV dually infected patients were analyzed. The best cut-off value of anti-HCV titer in predicting HCV viremia was 9.95 (AUROC 0.99, PConclusionsAnti-HCV titer strongly predicted HCV viremia. This excellent performance could be generalized to either HCV mono-infected or HBV dually infected patients.