Hepatitis C virus testing in infants, a move to early screening by HCV RNA at 2 months of age.

Abstract

In the last decade, hepatitis C virus (HCV) has become a curable chronic viral infection, with excellent treatment and streamlined diagnostic testing. Canada and many other countries have adopted national elimination targets; however, reaching these goals will require changes in the way care is provided. Standard of care HCV treatment is all-oral daily medication for 8 or 12 weeks and all provinces in Canada have mechanisms for public coverage. Unfortunately, vertical transmission continues to be the predominant reason for paediatric infection, but if diagnosed, children can be treated as young as 3 years old. Early paediatric diagnosis and cure are of the utmost importance to prevent complications such as adverse mental health outcomes and advanced liver disease early in life. One major barrier to paediatric diagnosis and cure is poor antibody screening uptake, as low as 23% by 18 months among children born to positive persons. In the United States, a landmark study showed a temporal decrease in screening rates from 91% at 2 months to 59% at 18 months. As such, the American Association for Study of the Liver/Infectious Disease Society of America, and very recently, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, now recommend screening by all children born to positive person for HCV RNA at 2-6 months of age. While antibody testing could still be completed at 18 months to determine serostatus, understanding if a child has active infection in infancy supports early linkage to care and decreases paediatric loss to follow-up.