the prevalence of hcv infection in hemodialysis population and compared elisa and pcr methods for detecting of hcv infection

Background: hemodialysis is one of the renal replacement therapies in patients with end-stage renal failure. the current study aimed at identifying the prevalence of hepatitis c virus (hcv) infection in hemodialysis population, and comparing serological (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) and molecular (polymerase chain reaction) methods to detect hcv infection in north of iran. methods: serum samples from 162 patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis were collected in 2 hemodialysis units of sari city (north of iran). hcv rnas were isolated from samples using ribo-prep nucleic acid extraction kit (amplisens®, russia). total rnas were extracted from samples and real-time polymerase chain reaction (pcr) was performed using hcv-frt pcr kit (amplisense, russia) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. results: in the study, 7 (4.3%) cases were hcv-ab positive and 155 (95.7%) hcv-ab negative. additionally, 11 patients (6.8%) were hcvpcr positive, while 151 (93.2%) were hcv-pcr negative. among 11 hcv-pcr positive patients, 7 (63.6%) were hcv-ab positive and 4 (36.4%) were hcv-ab negative. hcv-ab test was not positive in any of the hcv-pcr negative patients. conclusions: the results showed that the specificity of hcv-rna detection was significantly higher than that of the conventional hcv-ab test. the gold standard test to confirm hcv positive should be pcr method.