Intra-hepatic cholestasis of pregnancy in hepatitis C virus infection.

Background: Aims of this study were to investigate whether hepatitis C virus infection influences the incidence and natural history of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) and whether ICP has different characteristics in hepatitis C virus (HCV) positive women from ICP in HCV negative women.

Methods: A prospective study for the prevalence of the HCV infection and for the incidence of ICP was carried out in the 5840 patients admitted to the Prenatal Department of Padua University, Italy, between January 1996 and January 1999. Testing was done for HCV by the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA 3), recombinant immuno blot assay (RIBA 3) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).