Transmissions of hepatitis C virus during the ancillary procedures for assisted conception

Since mother to child transmissions of hepatitis C virus (HCV) have been re ported to be low teams involved in assisted reproductive technologies have accepted HCV positive patients into their programmes. We report in the pres ent paper two cases of undoubted patient to patient HCV transmission while patients were attending for assisted conception. In both cases, HCV genotyp ing and sequencing of the first hypervariable region of the HCV genome prov ided molecular evidence for nosocomial transmission. Investigations made to elucidate the route of contamination have shown that the most likely route of contamination is through healthcare workers. Such nosocomial HCV infect ion has been reported in other healthcare situations, mainly in dialysis un its, and physical proximity was also suspected to be at the origin of the i nfection. We conclude that assisted reproduction teams must be very prudent when including such patients in their programmes.