A novel blood test could bring a breakthrough in the battle against the dangerous hepatitis-C virus.
This procedure offers a considerably cheaper alternative to the normal commercial tests, whilst maintaining equal sensitivity. So now, for the first time, poorer countries will also have the opportunity to monitor their entire blood banks for the hepatitis C virus using optimum methods. This procedure has been developed by researchers at Bonn University and the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg. Scientists from Brazil, Singapore, South Africa and England were also engaged in this research. The study will appear in the journal " PLoS Medicine " on 10th February.
170 million people worldwide have already become infected with the hepatitis C virus. The early stages of the disease often go unnoticed. However, later symptoms include liver cancer and mortally dangerous liver cirrhosis. One of the chief sources of infection lies in contaminated blood banks, which is why all the bloodbanks in Europe or the USA are routinely tested for the hepatitis C virus. However, the poorer countries cannot afford this, or they have to rely on out-dated tests of inadequate sensitivity. The new procedure could change all this. "In Brazil, a standard hepatitis C test costs over 100 dollars a sample - for us, in contrast, the cost lies at just under 19 dollars", declares Dr. Jan Felix Drexler. 10 dollars of this are licence fees - several major pharmaceutical companies hold patents for the genome of the hepatitis C virus.
Dr. Drexler, who has been engaged in the development of this new test procedure, has just removed from the Bernhard-Nocht Institute in Hamburg to Bonn University. The procedure functions, in principle, in exactly the same way as most of the commercial tests hitherto available on the market: all these procedures recognise genotype sequences in the blood, which originate from the hepatitis C virus. However, the problem is that various types of pathogen exist, whose genotypes are sometimes very different. A good blood test ought to raise the alarm equally well for each of these types. "In Asia, for example, we often find different hepatitis C viruses from ours", says Dr. Drexler. "But when a tourist becomes infected in Thailand and subsequently donates blood in Germany, we must be able to diagnose these blood samples without fail, too".
600 Blood Samples examined