Hepatitis C virus antibodies in patients with hypergammaglobulinemia and autoantibodies

ABSTRACT

It was found that testing for antibodies to hepatitis C virus [HCV-Ab] by the available recombinant EIA may yield false positive results in patients with various liver diseases and in others with no evidence of liver disease. This work thus aimed at studying any coexisting relation between HCV-Ab positivity by ELISA and generation testing and the presence of autoantibodies and hypergammaglobulinemia among Egyptian patients. For this purpose, 21 patients with various autoimmune diseases and 20 patients with various liver diseases and positive anti-HCV-Ab were studied, besides 300 normal blood donors volunteers. The results showed a significant relation between HCV-Abs positivity and high IgG levels in tested sera, on one hand, and with positive antinuclear antibody and positive rheumatoid factor, on the other hand. It was thus concluded that a positive HCV-Ab result by ELISA technique should be considered with caution in such conditions