Abstract
We investigated the long-term prognosis of the hepatitis C virus carriers with normal or near normal liver enzyme, who were positive for anti-HCV at blood center or regular medical check between 1988 and 1992.
The number of the cases were 35 (15 men, 20 women) and the age ranged between 25 and 66 years old (average 48.4±11.5). Follow-up period was 6 to 156 months (average 27.8±29.2 including the data. before a first visit to our hospital). The results were as follows; 1) Most of the cases (19 of 20 cases, 95%) who were positive for anti -HCV and HCV-RNA had abnormal histological findings. 2) There were three cases positive for anti-HCV and HCV-RNA whose transaminase urgently elevated after showing the normal values for over 10 years. So, HCV carriers should be followed up regularly for a long period to detect early the elevation of ALT. 3) There were four cases positive for anti-HCV and negative for HCV-RNA, among them two cases seemed to be false positive or past infection of HCV because ZTT and ALT (≤23) were entirely normal over 12 months and value of optical density was very low, and the other two cases seemed to be mismatching of the primer for PCR because of continuous slight elevation of ALT.
