Significance of liver negative-strand HCV RNA quantitation in chronic hepatitis C

Background/Aims Liver negative-strand hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA is the most direct indicator of active viral replication but has only been examined in a few semiquantitative studies. Methods Positive- and negative-strand HCV RNA in the right (R) and left (L) liver lobes was quantified by rTth-based strand-specific real-time polymerase chain reaction for 48 chronic hepatitis C patients. Results Close correlations between lobes were seen for positive- and negative-strand amounts ( r =0.950; P r =0.920; P r =−0.322; P =0.026 for R and r =−0.340; P =0.018 for L), while liver tissues with hepatitis B virus DNA contained larger amounts of each strand. In 27 patients treated with enhanced interferon monotherapy, the amounts of liver negative strands ( Conclusions Negative-strand quantitation is uniform in the liver and bears distinct relevance to the disease.