High Prevalence of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in Chronic Hemodialysis Patients.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is very common among hemodialysis (HD) patients. Transmission of infection in this setting has been related to the number of blood transfusions, the duration of hemodialysis and to nosocomial transmission of virus in the dialysis unit. We conducted a study of 74 HD patients to determine the frequency of HCV at a single point in time (cross-sectional analysis), and to evaluate the association between HCV infection and patients' demographic, clinical and biochemical features.