The correlations of surrogate markers with anti-hepatitis C virus and other disease markers.

Testing of donors' sera for the level of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and the presence of hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) has been required since 1986 as "surrogate" tests for non-A, non-B post transfusion hepatitis (NANB-PTH). With the availability of a test for the antibody to hepatitis C virus (HCV), the need for these two tests and their impact on one hospital are reviewed. Precisely 12.3 percent of the donors were excluded for reactivity to surrogate disease markers but no reactivity to "true" markers. The positive predictive values of these surrogate tests were low and comparable (varying from 7.4 percent to 30 percent). In view of the high rate of donor exclusion and the low rate of correlation with "true" disease markers, the need for these tests needs to be reassessed.