ABSTRACT
Hepatitis C virus is a single stranded RNA virus. HCV strains could be grouped into at least 12 genotypes. Diagnosis of HCV infection was made in chronic liver disease patients and the presence of HCV-RNA in the circulation was correlated with the severity of the liver disease in anti- HCV positive chronic liver diseased patients using the polymerase chain reaction [PCR] technique in 159 cases and 50 controls. The prevalence of anti-HCV among the chronic liver disease patients was 83.6% and 38% in the control group. The PCR results were 72.3% in the patient group and 26% in the control group. The percentage of RNA positive cases in the RIBA positive samples was 87.4%. HCV-RNA was present in 89.7% of the cirrhotic patients. ALT level correlated with anti-HCV positivity and there was a significant difference between the patient and control regarding ALT level, 51.6% of the cases in the patient group had elevated ALT and 84.1% of the cases who had elevated ALT were HCV-RNA positive. We concluded that there was a high prevalence of HCV infection among chronic liver disease patients and HCV-RNA was found to correlate with the liver pathology, symptom free HCV infected patients exist and some have normal liver function tests, despite the presence of liver affection which might be severe