ANTIBODIES AND VIREMIA IN ACUTE POSTTRANSFUSION HEPATITIS-C - A PROSPECTIVE-STUDY

Fourteen patients who developed acute post-transfusion hepatitis C aft er open-heart surgery were studied for seroconversion, viremia, and am inotransferases. Anti-HCV antibodies were measured by first and second generation ELISA and became positive between one week and more than 6 months after infection. Seroconversion in four patients and passively transfused antibodies were only found by the second generation assay, indicating its significantly higher sensitivity. Viremia was detected by reverse transcription and the polymerase chain reaction within the first 4 weeks of infection in 13 patients and persisted for more than 2 years in all of them. One patient died of cardiac cause. Viral stra ins were heterogeneous between the different patients, but showed no s ignificant variation within one patient during the course of hepatitis deduced from the results with different sets of oligonucleotides. Vir emia preceded hepatitis by 4 weeks, seroconversion determined by ELISA II followed after an 8 week interval, and anti-C-100 antibodies appea red 26 weeks later. Aminotransferase activities returned to normal val ues in 10 patients. (C) 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.