Enomoto N, Takada N, Takase S, Takada A, Date T
Department of Internal Medicine, Kanazawa Medical University, Ishikawa, Japan.
Gastroenterol Jpn. 1991 Feb;26(1):42-6. doi: 10.1007/BF02779507.
Recently, the assay system of anti-hepatitis C virus antibody (HCV-Ab) was developed. However, there is no clinically useful method to detect hepatitis C virus (HCV) itself. The authors recently developed a method to detect the HCV-RNA genome in plasma using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In the present study, the specificity of this assay in detecting HCV infection was investigated. Freshly obtained 1 ml plasma specimens from 100 patients with various liver diseases and from 11 control subjects were studied. In patients with non-A, non-B (NANB) hepatitis-related liver diseases, HCV-RNA was detected in 2 out of 7 cases of acute hepatitis, in 29 out of 31 cases of chronic hepatitis, in 17 out of 21 cases of cirrhosis and in 2 out of 6 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma. On the other hand, no HCV-RNA was detected in 15 cases of various types of alcoholic liver diseases, in 12 cases of hepatitis B related liver diseases, and in 11 controls. HCV-RNA was detected in 2 of 6 drinkers with chronic hepatitis. The prevalence of HCV-RNA was not closely related to a history of blood transfusions. These results suggest that our method for HCV-RNA is specific for HCV infection and HCV infection is the likely etiology of most chronic NANB hepatitis cases. The clinical usefulness of our method is illustrated by the fact that we were able to study 100 patients and needed only 1 ml plasma per HCV-RNA assay.
最近，抗丙型肝炎病毒抗体（HCV-Ab）检测系统得以开发。然而，目前尚无临床上实用的检测丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）本身的方法。作者最近开发了一种利用聚合酶链反应（PCR）检测血浆中HCV-RNA基因组的方法。在本研究中，对该检测方法检测HCV感染的特异性进行了研究。研究了从100例患有各种肝脏疾病的患者以及11名对照受试者新鲜获取的1毫升血浆样本。在患有非甲非乙型（NANB）肝炎相关肝脏疾病的患者中，7例急性肝炎中有2例检测到HCV-RNA，31例慢性肝炎中有29例，21例肝硬化中有17例，6例肝细胞癌中有2例。另一方面，15例各种类型的酒精性肝病、12例乙型肝炎相关肝脏疾病以及11名对照中均未检测到HCV-RNA。6例慢性肝炎饮酒者中有2例检测到HCV-RNA。HCV-RNA的流行率与输血史没有密切关系。这些结果表明，我们检测HCV-RNA的方法对HCV感染具有特异性，并且HCV感染可能是大多数慢性NANB肝炎病例的病因。我们能够研究100例患者，且每次HCV-RNA检测仅需1毫升血浆，这一事实说明了我们方法的临床实用性。
