SCREENIGN OF VOLUNTARY BLOOD DONORS BY HCV RELATED ANTIBODY TEST KIT (IMUCHECK)

SCREENIGN OF VOLUNTARY BLOOD DONORS BY HCV RELATED ANTIBODY TEST KIT (IMUCHECK) Satoru Hino1, Akira Kobayashi1), Michiko Imamoto1), Masahiro Endo1, Hitomi Tanaka1), Nobuyuki Yokokawa1, Isao Nakao1 and Masaru Shimizu2) 1) Tokyo Komagome Red Cross Blood Center 2) Department of Transfusion Medicine, Tokyo Women's Medical College HCV related antibody was screened among 3291 voluntary blood donors by two test kits (Imucheck for screening and Imunojudge for immunobloting) using two recombinant antigens (C7 in NS3 and C 11 in core region) cloned from the plasma of Japanese non-A, non-B hepatitis patient. The positive rates of Imucheck and PHA (DAINABOT) were 3.04% and 0.55%, respectively. 88 out of 100 Imucheck positive samples were tested by Imunojudge, which resulted in 53 (60.2%) samples positive to C7 and/or C 11 antigen; 12 samples were positive to C7, 23 to C 11 and 18 to both. HCV-RNA was detected in 11 samples positive with Imunojudge by PCR using 5' non-coding primer, all of which showed high C.LO. above 8.00 by Imucheck and had both C7 and C11 antibodies by Imunojudge. These samples with HCV-RNA showed more than 212 in PHA titer and RIBA-II positive. Imucheck detected 5.5 times more positive samples than PHA did, but one third of them was considered non-specific reaction by Imunojudge. The samples which had both C 7 and C 11 antibodies were mostly PHA positive, and covered the all samples with HCV-RNA. Although Imucheck and Imunojudge would be useful in screening blood donors for HCV related antibodies, it remains to be clarified how to consider only either C7 or C 11 positive samples.