A. Cerino et al., COMPARATIVE-EVALUATION OF 2 SEROLOGIC TYPING METHODS FOR HEPATITIS-C VIRUS, Journal of clinical microbiology, 34(3), 1996, pp. 714-716
Serologic methods of typing for hepatitis C virus offer advantages ove
r PCR-based typing methods in terms of speed and simplicity of sample
preparation and in the use of standard laboratory equipment. We examin
ed the sensitivities and specificities of two hepatitis C virus seroty
ping assays which use sets of type-specific antigenic peptides derived
from the core or the nonstructural 4 (NS4) regions and compared the r
esults with those of molecular typing with type-specific primers from
the core region. Although there was as a good concordance between sero
typing by either assay and genotyping, we found that the sensitivities
of both serologic assays were less than optimal compared with that of
molecular typing, with only about 50% of samples being unequivocally
typed. Moreover, amino acid sequence similarities within the regions o
f the genome used for serotyping preclude differentiation into subtype
s, which may have important clinical and therapeutic implications.