EVALUATION OF ANTIBODY AGAINST AR142, A SYNTHETIC PEPTIDE DERIVED FROM THE CORE SEQUENCE OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUS, IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF NON-A, NON-B CHRONIC LIVER-DISEASE

We evaluated serum anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) using a synthetic pept ide (AR142) which includes an epitope in the core region of HCV. The i ncidence of anti-AR142 in 98 patients with type non-A, non-B chronic l iver diseases (NANB-CLD) was 89.8%, while all the 28 patients with non -type C chronic liver diseases were negative for anti-AR142. Among 98 NANB-CLD patients, 74 were positive for both anti-AR142 and anti-C100- 3, 23 showed discordant results, and one was positive for neither. Eig hty-one NANB-CLD patients underwent reverse transcription-polymerase c hain reaction assay to detect viremia and 76 (93.8%) had a detectable level of HCV-RNA. Titers of anti-AR142 were not different among groups of different disease activities, genotypes of HCV, nor amount of seru m HCV-RNA. These observations suggest that anti-AR142 could be a usefu l marker for chronic HCV infection.