ABSTRACT
National Cancer Institute ,Cairo University1;Clinical Pathology Department, Ain Shams University2 Hepatitis C is a major health problem for Egypt.Nucleic acid amplification testing [NAT] of blood donations was implemented to detect 'window period' infection.The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of the NAT technique and compare it with the current used methods of detection of hepatitis C, to estimate the true up to date incidences of hepatitis B, hepatitis C and coinfection by both in Egypt. The study was conducted on 62543; 46868 of them were honouary blood donors from Nasser Institute and 15675 were healthy volunteers of the blood compaigns from National Cancer Institute in the period between May 2001 to May 2004.Blood samples were obtained from the donors and were screened for antibodies against HCV, HIV, Treponema pallidum and HBsAg.NAT technique was done for 60045 donors which showed a negative HCVantibody by ELISA. We found that HCV antibodies in 3.99% of the donors, HBsAg in 1.59% 0f them. The incidence of coinfection with both hepatitis B and C viruses did not exceed 0.095%.No HIV positive cases were detected and a total of 0.035% had serologic markers suggestive of active syphilis infection. The dilution used for the pooling for the RT-PCR was 1/40.We found '5' NAT positive cases out of 60045.We concluded from this that using NAT technique in conjunction with ELISA screening for anti-HCV antibodies should be further investigated especially in developing countries, putting in mind that using this technique increases the cost of screening by around 10 L.E for one blood bag. Therefore the use of NAT should be weighed against the potential benefit of reducing the incidence of HCV infection