COMPARATIVE-EVALUATION OF 2 SEROLOGIC TYPING METHODS FOR HEPATITIS-C VIRUS

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.