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Hepatitis C Virus Not Found in Fulminant Non-A, Non-B Hepatitis
- Teresa L. Wright, MD;
- Henry Hsu, MD;
- Elizabeth Donegan, MD;
- Stephen Feinstone, MD;
- Harry Greenberg, MD;
- Alexandra Read, MD;
- Nancy L. Ascher, MD;
- John P. Roberts, MD; and
- John R. Lake, MD
Excerpt
Non-A, non-B hepatitis is a diagnosis of exclusion in patients with acute hepatitis but without serologic evidence of hepatitis A or hepatitis B viral infection. The recently identified hepatitis C virus (HCV) accounts for most cases of non-A, non-B hepatitis after blood transfusion or intravenous drug abuse (1, 2). However, it is not known whether HCV causes fulminant non-A, non-B hepatitis. To address this issue, we used a sensitive and specific polymerase chain reaction to detect HCV RNA in patients with fulminant hepatic failure of unknown cause.
Patients and Methods We studied 15 patients who were referred for liver transplantation
Article and Author Information
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From the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California; Palo Alto Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Palo Alto, California; Stanford University, Stanford, California; and the Laboratory of Hepatitis Research, Food and Drug Administration, Bethesda, Maryland. For current author addresses, see end of text.
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Grant Support: By a grant from the UCSF Academic Senate and by the National Institute for Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant DK-26743.
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Requests for Reprints: Teresa L. Wright, MD, Gastroenterology Unit, 111B, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 4150 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA 94121.
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Current Author Addresses: Dr. Wright: Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, CA 94121.
Drs. Hsu and Greenberg: Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA 94304.
Drs. Donegan, Read, Ascher, Roberts, and Lake: University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143.
Dr. Feinstone: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.
