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EXPOSURE TO HEPATITIS C VIRUS INDUCES CELLULAR IMMUNE RESPONSES WITHOUT DETECTABLE VIREMIA OR SEROCONVERSION

2005; American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; Volume: 73; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4269/ajtmh.2005.73.1.0730044

1476-1645

Maged M Al-Sherbiny, Ahmed A. Osman, Nahla Mohamed, Mohamed Tarek M. Shata, Fatma Abdel-Aziz, Mohamed Abdel‐Hamid, Sayed F. Abdelwahab, Nabiel Mikhail, Sonia Stoszek, Lionello Ruggeri, Antonella Folgori, Alfredo Nicosia, Alfred M. Prince, G. Thomas Strickland,

Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment

Sporadic cases of cell-mediated immunity (CMI) in persons exposed to hepatitis C (HCV) but evidently uninfected have been reported. To further define this, we measured CMI in individuals without evidence of HCV infection, that is, negative for HCV-antibodies (anti-HCV) and RNA, residing in a rural Egyptian community where prevalence of anti-HCV was 24%. Cell-mediated immunity (CMI) measured by interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay, confirmed by intracellular staining using flow cytometry, against HCV peptides was measured in seronegative individuals with high-risk (HR) and low-risk (LR) exposures to HCV. Thirteen of 71 (18.3%) HR subjects but only 1 of 35 (2.9%) LR subjects had detectable CMI (P = 0.032). These data are compatible with the hypothesis that exposures to HCV may lead to development of HCV-specific CMI without anti-HCV and ongoing viral replication. We speculate induced CMI clears HCV sometimes when anti-HCV is not detectable, and HCV-specific CMI is a useful surrogate marker for exposure to HCV.