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The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia

INTRODUCTION: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a serious health problem in Georgia. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study to identify and characterize the natural history of recent HCV infection since very first days of infection. Recent HCV infection was defined as detectable plasma HCV RNA...

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Autores principales: Tsertsvadze, Tengiz, Sharvadze, Lali, Chkhartishvili, Nikoloz, Dzigua, Lela, Karchava, Marine, Gatserelia, Lana, Abutidze, Akaki, Nelson, Kenrad E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26843145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-016-0478-6
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author Tsertsvadze, Tengiz
Sharvadze, Lali
Chkhartishvili, Nikoloz
Dzigua, Lela
Karchava, Marine
Gatserelia, Lana
Abutidze, Akaki
Nelson, Kenrad E.
author_facet Tsertsvadze, Tengiz
Sharvadze, Lali
Chkhartishvili, Nikoloz
Dzigua, Lela
Karchava, Marine
Gatserelia, Lana
Abutidze, Akaki
Nelson, Kenrad E.
author_sort Tsertsvadze, Tengiz
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a serious health problem in Georgia. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study to identify and characterize the natural history of recent HCV infection since very first days of infection. Recent HCV infection was defined as detectable plasma HCV RNA in the absence of anti-HCV antibodies. RESULTS: A total of 7600 HCV seronegative blood donors and 3600 HCV seronegative drug users were screened for recent HCV infection. Among them 7 (0.09 %) blood donors and 10 (0.28 %) drug users tested positive for HCV RNA and were classified as having recent HCV infection. Of these 17 patients 4 (23.5 %) spontaneously cleared the virus by the end of 24 week follow-up. Five clinical forms of recent HCV infection were identified during the follow-up. Four patients had symptomatic disease, including 3 patients with jaundice and other clinical symptoms (2 of them cleared virus) and 1 patient only had other symptoms without jaundice. All symptomatic patients had ALT elevation. Three distinct variants of asymptomatic disease were identified in 13 patients: 9 patients had ALT elevation and none cleared the virus; 2 patients developed chronic disease without ALT elevation; 2 patients cleared virus without anti-HCV seroconversion and without ALT elevation; this form can be described as transitory HCV viremia. CONCLUSION: Additional studies are needed to define clinical and public health implications of transitory HCV viremia. Our study suggests the need for implementing nucleic acid testing of blood donors and key populations in order to more effectively identify HCV infected persons.
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spelling pubmed-47393212016-02-04 The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia Tsertsvadze, Tengiz Sharvadze, Lali Chkhartishvili, Nikoloz Dzigua, Lela Karchava, Marine Gatserelia, Lana Abutidze, Akaki Nelson, Kenrad E. Virol J Research INTRODUCTION: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a serious health problem in Georgia. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study to identify and characterize the natural history of recent HCV infection since very first days of infection. Recent HCV infection was defined as detectable plasma HCV RNA in the absence of anti-HCV antibodies. RESULTS: A total of 7600 HCV seronegative blood donors and 3600 HCV seronegative drug users were screened for recent HCV infection. Among them 7 (0.09 %) blood donors and 10 (0.28 %) drug users tested positive for HCV RNA and were classified as having recent HCV infection. Of these 17 patients 4 (23.5 %) spontaneously cleared the virus by the end of 24 week follow-up. Five clinical forms of recent HCV infection were identified during the follow-up. Four patients had symptomatic disease, including 3 patients with jaundice and other clinical symptoms (2 of them cleared virus) and 1 patient only had other symptoms without jaundice. All symptomatic patients had ALT elevation. Three distinct variants of asymptomatic disease were identified in 13 patients: 9 patients had ALT elevation and none cleared the virus; 2 patients developed chronic disease without ALT elevation; 2 patients cleared virus without anti-HCV seroconversion and without ALT elevation; this form can be described as transitory HCV viremia. CONCLUSION: Additional studies are needed to define clinical and public health implications of transitory HCV viremia. Our study suggests the need for implementing nucleic acid testing of blood donors and key populations in order to more effectively identify HCV infected persons. BioMed Central 2016-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4739321/ /pubmed/26843145 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-016-0478-6 Text en © Tsertsvadze et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Tsertsvadze, Tengiz
Sharvadze, Lali
Chkhartishvili, Nikoloz
Dzigua, Lela
Karchava, Marine
Gatserelia, Lana
Abutidze, Akaki
Nelson, Kenrad E.
The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title_full The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title_fullStr The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title_full_unstemmed The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title_short The natural history of recent hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of Georgia
title_sort natural history of recent hepatitis c virus infection among blood donors and injection drug users in the country of georgia
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739321/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26843145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12985-016-0478-6
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