Objective: The present study was performed to evaluate the reliability of three reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays, one commercial and two ‘homebrew’, for GB virus C (GBV-C)/hepatitis G virus (HGV) RNA detection in clinical specimens. We, therefore, investigated the virus prevalence with the method that gave us the best performances. Methods: The commercial assay amplified sequences from the viral 5′-untranslated region (5′UTR) and non-structural 3 (NS3) region. The non-commercial assays 1 and 2 were based on different primers for the 5′UTR consensus sequence. Results: The percentage of overall concordance by the three methods was 91.7%, raising to 93.0% when only the two non-commercial methods were compared. Assay 1 showed low sensitivity (57.1% vs. the commercial assay, 58.8% vs. assay 2), with 100% specificity. The commercial assay gave 18 of 54 (33.3%) ‘false-negative’ results, concordantly negative by the other assays. The prevalence of GBV-C/HGV RNA among the HIV+ patients was 27.0 and 32.6% in HIV/HCV co-infected patients. Conclusion: These data suggest that assay 2 has higher reliability as compared to the other two methods and may be used for an accurate GBV-C/HGV RNA detection in clinical and epidemiological studies.

Keywords:
GBV-C/HGV, RT-PCR, Sensitivity, Specificity
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© 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel
2004
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