Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of
hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in nasal lavage (NL) fluid of patients had
no history of previous HCV infection.
Patients 81 Methods: The study luas designed as a 2-arm screening
study: Group N included 200 randomly chosen patients and started by
testing NL fluid for presence of anti-HCV antibodies (anti-HCV Ab) and
those with positive result underwent determination of sero-positivity. The
other arm consisted of another patients' group {Group S; n~200) under
went determination of sero-positivity, and those proved positive under
went determination of positivity of their NL fluid for anti-HCV Ab. PCR
identification of HCV RNA was conducted for all positive sera and NL
fluid.
Results: Anti-HCV Ab were detected in NL fluid of 7 patients with de
tection rate of 3.8% and in serum samples of 10 patients with a detection
rate of 5% and an overall detection rate of patients with anti-HCV positive
of 4.4%. The 7 patients with anti-HCV Ab positive NL fluid were sero"
positive: while only 6 of the 10 sero-posiiive patients had anti-HCV Ab
positive NLfluid, thus, determination of anti-HCV Ab in NLfluid could de
tect sero-positive patients withsensitivity rate of 78.4%. Qualitative PCR
detection ofHCV-RNA identified vital RNA in 14 serum samples: 13 sam
ples were sero-positive and NLfluid positive and one was sero-positive
but NLfluid negative, while the other 3 sero-positive samples were free of
viral RNA. Thus. NLfluid anti-HCV Ab positivity could identify patients
with viremia with sensitivity and accuracy rates of 92.8% and 94.1%, re- |
