Detection of hepatitis C virus genomic sequences in the cerebrospinal fluid of HIV-infected patients

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Abstract
To assess the presence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the central nervous system (CNS), HCV‐RNA was sought in paired serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples of 21 HIV/HCV‐positive patients: HCV‐RNA was detected in the serum of 19/21 patients (90.4%), and in the CSF of five of the 19 serum‐positive patients. The presence of HCV‐RNA was confirmed in follow‐up CSF samples available for three of these five patients. An identical HCV genotype was found in the paired serum/CSF samples. No correlation was found between the different genotypes and the presence of HCV in CSF of the individual patients. HCV viremia levels measured by branched‐DNA and quantitative PCR were not significantly higher in the CSF‐positive cases than in the CSF‐negative cases (P = 0.3, using b‐DNA; 0.5, using quantitative PCR). This report shows the presence of HCV in CSF and raises the possibility that the CNS may act as a reservoir site for HCV. J. Med. Virol. 53:252–254, 1997.
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