Detection of Hepatitis C Virus genotype-4 using nucleic acid aptamers

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major contributing agent to mortality in the whole world. Early investigation and curative treatment of HCV can reduce the risk of liver-related mortality and serve to stop transmission of new infections. Various Egyptian studies described HCV as a major public health burden,with the highest prevalence rate in the world. Different HCV rapid tests and screening Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays (ELISAs) have been available for detection of HCV. These assays lack the higher sensitivity, specificity and cannot detect the early infection, immuno-suppressed patients succeeding transplantation and the immunocompromised HIV-infected pateints. Hence, both the positive and negative samples obtained using these assays require to be confirmed using the qRT-PCR method which is more expensive, time consuming and prone to contamination technique.