الفهرس 
Hepatitis C virusOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Chronic hepatitis C virus infection is a major public health problem leading cause of chronic liver disease, with an estimated global prevalence of 3% occurring in about 180 million carriers and approximately 4 million people have been newly infected annually. World Health Organization considers HCV an epidemic, a ”silent” epidemic because a patient living with HCV can be infected for decades before being discovered.
Because of the use of contaminated needles and syringes during mass schistosomiasis treatment during the period the 1960s-1980s, Egypt has the highest prevalence of HCV infection in the world. Diagnostic tests for hepatitis C can be divided into two general categories , serological assays that detect antibody to hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) and molecular assays that detect, quantify, and/or characterize HCV RNA genomes by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) within
an infected patient. ELISA is a diagnostic technique used to detect the
presence of an antibody or antigen in a blood sample, so using of specific ELISA for the detection and quantitation of HCV antigens has
recently been developed. The identification of native HCV antigens may prove very useful in the diagnosis and early treatment of HCV infection.
This study aimed to identification and detection of HCV antigen in serum samples of chronic hepatitis C patients using western blot and ELISA techniques. Also Evaluation of the diagnostic performances of
HCV antigen in the diagnosis of HCV infection. 1- Patients included in this study were 80 consecutive Egyptian
individuals, 63 (78.8%) males and 17 (21.2%) females, with clinically
and laboratory confirmed chronic hepatitis C. There was a wide age range 22-53 years with mean age 42.4 ± 9.2 years.