Prevalence of Hepatitis c Virus Infection Among Rheumatological Patients

Assiut University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Hepatitis C

Treatments: Diagnostic Test: HCV RT-PCR

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03587714

Hepatitis C

Details and patient eligibility

About

Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the world. In 2015, the prevalence of HCV RNA was found to be 7.0%.(1) The prevalence of HCV was studied in Rheumatoid arthritis in few studies(2,3), but to our knowledge, no previous work studied it in other rheumatologic diseases.

Full description

Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the world. In 2015, the prevalence of HCV RNA was found to be 7.0%.(1) The prevalence of HCV was studied in Rheumatoid arthritis in few studies(2,3), but to our knowledge, no previous work studied it in other rheumatologic diseases.

This study aims at detecting the prevalence of subclinical HCV infection in different rheumatologic disease groups in Egypt.

Consecutive patients with different rheumatologic diseases from seven- geographically different- rheumatology departments were prospectively studied. None of the patients was known to have previous HCV infection. Patients' serum samples were screened for the presence of anti-HCV antibodies. Patients with positive serology were further evaluated for the presence of HCV ribonucleic acid by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)

Enrollment: 800 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 20 to 80 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Consecutive patients with different rheumatologic diseases from seven- geographically different- rheumatology departments were prospectively studied. None of the patients was known to have previous HCV infection

Exclusion criteria

• pregnancy and end organ failure