VERTICAL TRANSMISSION OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUS IN LOW-RISK PREGNANT-WOMEN

To assess the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in pregn ant women and the rate of vertical transmission in infected mothers be longing to a low-risk group, 1,388 women were tested for HCV antibody at delivery, Twenty-five anti-HCV-positive women with no apparent sour ce of HCV exposure were recruited. A reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and a new quantitative branched DNA-based sign al amplification assay (bDNA) were used to detect HCV RNA. The rate of anti-HCV positivity in pregnant women was 2.5% (36 of 1,388), Of the 25 cohort mothers, 18 (72%) were positive for HCV RNA by RT-PCR, 13 of whom were also positive by the bDNA assay (sensitivity 72.2%), Of the 25 infants of low-risk mothers tested at birth, 22 were anti-HCV posi tive, two were weakly reactive, one was negative, and none was viremic , Neither active humoral immunoresponse nor HCV RNA was detected in an y of the infants over a period of 12 months, These data suggest a rela tively high prevalence of anti-HCV in unselected pregnant women and a poor efficiency of vertical transmission of HCV in a low-risk populati on, irrespective of the viral burden of the mother-to-be.