BackNew opportunities in the diagnosis of hepatitis C
Approximately 150 million people worldwide are infected with the hepatitis C virus, and 3-4 million are infected for the first time each year. In Kazakhstan, according to official statistics, from 2003 to 2013, the incidence of chronic viral hepatitis C increased 7.3 times.
Hepatitis C is a viral infectious liver disease that is transmitted through contact with the blood or other body fluids of an infected person. Currently, up to 90% of people infected with hepatitis C virus do not know that they are sick. The "silent killer" has been going on covertly for a long time and has no noticeable clinical manifestations, except for a slight fatigue and fatigue in the evenings.
But not everything is so sad, modern medicine does not stand still and introduces new methods of treatment and diagnosis for each type of HCV. The success of treatment directly depends on the timeliness of diagnosis, so there are more and more requirements for diagnostic methods. One of the modern methods of laboratory diagnosis of viral hepatitis C is PCR analysis.
PCR (polymerase chain reaction) detects ribonucleic acids (RNA) of the hepatitis C virus in the patient's blood, even in very small concentrations. It can be used to diagnose the early stages of the disease, when very few antibodies to the disease have been developed and other tests simply will not determine them. In addition, PCR analysis make it possible to quantify the viral load, which is especially important for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the therapy used.
Today, the OLYMP branches of independent laboratories offers complete and reliable diagnosis of hepatitis C virus, ranging from screening tests - serological tests (anti-HCV total) to real-time PCR analysis. The first test (anti-HCVtotal) provides information only about the fact of infection, in the past or in the present, but it is unknown whether there is a livirus in the body. This question is answered by a PCR analysis, the detection of viral RNA indicates viremia, therefore, the test should be make before and during treatment to assess the effectiveness of the therapy. To increase the effectiveness of quantitative diagnostics of HCV, an improvement of PCR analysis was carried out using the COBASAmpliPrep/COBASTaqMan 48 equipment from RocheDiagnostics (Switzerland) with automated sample preparation.
Now the OLYMP CDL allows specialists to examine patients for the presence of hepatitis C virus in the blood to determine the viral load with a lower limit of sensitivity of the method of 15 IU/ml.
For comparison, when making standard PCR with elements of manual sample preparation at the stage of RNA isolation, the lower sensitivity threshold is 300 IU/ml.
The informative value of this analysis is especially important for patients with chronic hepatitis C, patients with acute hepatitis who may be in the so-called "serological window" period, these are "false negative", seronegative results (anti-HCV) and seropositive patients with normal liver values. All of these studies are available in any of the 190 treatment rooms across the branches in Kazakhstan.
Official letter from Roche Diagnostics *"Clinical protocol for the diagnosis and treatment of chronic hepatitis C in adults" Nersesov A.V., Kaliaskarova K.S., Dzhumabayeva A.E., Journal "Man and Medication", Almaty, Kazakhstan No. 6 (37) p.2-20, 2014.
Hepatitis C virus, Col. RNA determination (HCV-RNA, QUANTITATIVE)
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hepatitis C PCR