HCV infection in Poland.

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world. In 1997, hepatitis C became a statutorily noticeable disease in Poland. Nevertheless, to date, only a few notable studies on the prevalence of HCV infection have been carried out in Poland. Therefore, a study to determine the prevalence of HCV infection markers in an unselected population of Polish subjects was performed.

Methods: After several advertisements (in the print media and on television, radio, and other public media) concerning free testing for all volunteers in a hospital laboratory, serum samples of 2,561 subjects (765 men and 1,796 women), with a mean age of 43 years (range 1-88 years), were collected and assessed. In the samples, we first tested for the presence of IgG anti-HCV antibodies using the third generation enzyme immunoassay Anti-HCV EIA Cobas(R) Core Test (Hoffmann La Roche, Basel, Switzerland). The determination of HCV-RNA was then performed on anti-HCV IgG-positive samples by qualitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) by automatic Cobas Amplicor (Roche Molecular Systems Hepatitis C Virus Test 2.0, Roche Molecular Systems, Nutley, NJ, USA).

Results: The presence of anti-HCV IgG was detected in a total of 48 cases (1.9%). Prevalence was significantly higher in men (2.3%) than in women (1.7%) (p = 0.0057), but was not significantly related to the subject's age (p = 0.51) or domicile (p = 0.35). The presence of HCV-RNA was detected in 31 (65%) anti-HCV-positive cases tested, with no significant relationship to either the age (p = 0.15), domicile (p = 0.24), or gender (p = 0.79) of the subjects.

Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study on the prevalence of HCV infection in the general population in Poland. The study has several limitations, such as, the use of a nonrandomized population. Nevertheless, the results obtained may be more realistic and applicable to the general population in Poland than those obtained previously (i.e., in voluntary blood donors).