TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vermehren, Johannes
A1  - Schlosser, Beate
A1  - Domke, Diana
A1  - Elanjimattom, Sandra
A1  - Müller, Christian
A1  - Hintereder, Gudrun
A1  - Hensel-Wiegel, Karin
A1  - Tauber, Rudolf
A1  - Berger, Annemarie
A1  - Haas, Norbert
A1  - Walcher, Felix
A1  - Möckel, Martin
A1  - Lehmann, Ralf
A1  - Zeuzem, Stefan
A1  - Sarrazin, Christoph
A1  - Berg, Thomas
T1  - High prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies in two metropolitan emergency departments in Germany : a prospective screening analysis of 28,809 patients
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Background and Aims: The prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibodies in Germany has been estimated to be in the range of 0.4–0.63%. Screening for HCV is recommended in patients with elevated ALT levels or significant risk factors for HCV transmission only. However, 15–30% of patients report no risk factors and ALT levels can be normal in up to 20–30% of patients with chronic HCV infection. The aim of this study was to assess the HCV seroprevalence in patients visiting two tertiary care emergency departments in Berlin and Frankfurt, respectively.

Methods: Between May 2008 and March 2010, a total of 28,809 consecutive patients were screened for the presence of anti-HCV antibodies. Anti-HCV positive sera were subsequently tested for HCV-RNA.

Results: The overall HCV seroprevalence was 2.6% (95% CI: 2.4–2.8; 2.4% in Berlin and 3.5% in Frankfurt). HCV-RNA was detectable in 68% of anti-HCV positive cases. Thus, the prevalence of chronic HCV infection in the overall study population was 1.6% (95% CI 1.5–1.8). The most commonly reported risk factor was former/current injection drug use (IDU; 31.2%) and those with IDU as the main risk factor were significantly younger than patients without IDU (p<0.001) and the male-to-female ratio was 72% (121 vs. 46 patients; p<0.001). Finally, 18.8% of contacted HCV-RNA positive patients had not been diagnosed previously.

Conclusions: The HCV seroprevalence was more than four times higher compared to current estimates and almost one fifth of contacted HCV-RNA positive patients had not been diagnosed previously.
Y1  - 2012
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/25745
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-257451
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2012 Vermehren et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 7
IS  - (7):e41206
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -