Frequency of Circulating Antibodies to Hepatitis C Virus (HCV): A Follow up Study
Abstract
The pattern of anti-HCV titer was observed among 24 HCV positive patients for six months in a follow up study. The study revealed an increase in the titer of HCV antibody of the 24 patients; in the first visit the number of patients with a titer of 1:3, 1:10, 1:100 and 1:300 were 12, 3, 6, 3 respectively, while in the fourth visit the number of patients with the above titers were found in 2,1.9 and 12 patients respectively. This finding reflected the importance of viremia level in the pathogenesis of HCV and its association with the existence of liver disease. The present work also revealed that the changes in the antibody level reflected variation of some liver function tests between first and fourth visit. From this study we can conclud that liver destruction in HCV positive patients can be followed by measuring both anti-HCV titer and variation in liver functions especially ALT level.