Moriya T, Sasaki F, Mizui M, Ohno N, Mohri H, Mishiro S, Yoshizawa H
Department of Hygiene, Hiroshima University School of Medicine, Japan.
Biomed Pharmacother. 1995;49(2):59-64. doi: 10.1016/0753-3322(96)82587-x.
A total of 16,714 pregnant Japanese women were tested for antibodies against hepatitis C virus (HCV), and 163 (0.98%) were positive. None of these were infected with human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1). We conducted a prospective study to discover the rate of HCV infection in babies born to mothers who were HCV RNA-positive but had no evidence for hepatitis (so called "asymptomatic carriers"), and only 2 (2.3%) of 87 such babies became infected during follow-up. This rate was considerably lower than those from other reports which included mothers with clinically overt chronic hepatitis C. We conducted another study to follow babies born to mothers with chronic hepatitis C, and found two babies infected. All of the four infected babies were born to mothers who had HCV RNA in their circulations around delivery at high titers (greater than 5.0 x 10(6) Eq/ml by branched DNA assay). This confirmed the previous finding that virus load was an important risk factor. In addition, we found three families where mother-to-infant HCV transmission was suspected in a retrospective study by indexing HCV-infected pediatric patients. Throughout the seven families, siblings of infected babies were free from HCV infection, suggesting that maternal infection of HCV owes much to chance. Breast milk feeding was not regarded as a risk factor. We also assessed the prevalence of anti-HCV antibody among 6-year old children, and only 10 of 10,446 (0.1%) were positive, suggesting low frequency of HCV infection during the period from birth to this age.
共有16714名日本孕妇接受了丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）抗体检测，其中163人（0.98%）呈阳性。这些人中没有一人感染人类免疫缺陷病毒1型（HIV-1）。我们进行了一项前瞻性研究，以发现HCV RNA呈阳性但无肝炎证据（即所谓“无症状携带者”）的母亲所生婴儿的HCV感染率，在87名此类婴儿的随访过程中，只有2人（2.3%）被感染。这一感染率远低于其他报告中包括患有临床显性慢性丙型肝炎母亲的感染率。我们还进行了另一项研究，对慢性丙型肝炎母亲所生婴儿进行随访，发现有两名婴儿被感染。所有四名受感染婴儿的母亲在分娩前后血液中的HCV RNA滴度都很高（分支DNA检测法大于5.0×10⁶Eq/ml）。这证实了之前的发现，即病毒载量是一个重要的危险因素。此外，在一项通过对HCV感染儿科患者进行索引的回顾性研究中，我们发现了三个疑似母婴HCV传播的家庭。在这七个家庭中，受感染婴儿的兄弟姐妹均未感染HCV，这表明HCV的母婴传播很大程度上是偶然的。母乳喂养未被视为危险因素。我们还评估了6岁儿童中抗HCV抗体的流行情况，在10446名儿童中只有10人（约0.1%）呈阳性，这表明从出生到这个年龄段期间HCV感染的频率较低。
