A CRITICAL-EVALUATION OF HEPATITIS-C TESTING OF CADAVERIC CORNEAL DONORS

Purpose. Enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) for hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibo dies used to screen corneal donors are optimized for testing premortem sera. This study evaluated their efficiency when screening cadaveric sera. Methods, Abbott HCV EIA 2.0 was used to rescreen 101 cadaveric s era, 70 of which had tested positive and 31 negative by EIA 1.0. Matri x-HCV recombinant immunoblot assay was used as a reference standard. A ntibody liters and reactivities were compared in premortem and cadaver ic sera. Selected sera from confirmed seropositive donors were screene d for virus by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results, HCV EIA 2.0 w as 100% sensitive and 92.7% specific. EIA and Matrix-HCV gave similar end-point titers with pre- and postmortem sera. Viral RNA was detected in only three of 15 sera from seropositive donors. Conclusions, EIA 2 .0 and Matrix-HCV efficiently screen cadaveric sera. However, HCV sero positivity does not necessarily indicate the presence of viral genomes in sera and tissues.