Evidences of Hepatitis C Virus Replication in Hepatocytes and Peripheral Blood Monocuclear Cells from Patients Negative for Viral RNA in Serum

摘要

In this study, we examined the expression of hepatitis C virus (HCV) components in hepatocytes and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from patients positive for anti-HCV antibodies and negative for serum HCV-RNA. The samples obtained from 25 randomly selected patients (13 of 25 patients showed no histological evidences of chronic hepatitis and had normal serum ALAT and GGTP levels) were studied by in situ Hybridization and Immunofluorescence assays. The findings show that HCV-RNA of both positive and negative polarity was carried in the hepatocytes of more than 80 of cases. The proportion of cells expressing the negative strand (mean