Hepatitis C virus infection: Its role in chronic liver diseases

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Abstract
In order to find out the infectious rate of hepatitis C viris (HCV) among chronic liver diseases, we investigated antibodies against hepatitis C virus and HCVRNA by method of ELISA, R1BA and RT-PCR in 410 patients with chronic liver disease. The prevalence of HCV infection was found to be 4%. Whereas the positive rate of HBsAg and HBV-DNA of these cases was 69% and 58%, respectively. There is no statistical significance between HCV infectious rate of patients with positive and negative HBsAg. The relative low infectious rate of HCV infection among chronic hepatic diseases indicates that HBV infection plays a more important role in causing chronic hepatitis than that of HCV. Thus, special emphasis should be paid to the preventive and therapeutic measures against hepatitis B in China.