Quantitative detection of hepatitis C virus genome in liver tissue and circulation by competitive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

We quantified hepatitis C virus RNA in 25 Japanese patients with chronic type C liver disease by competitive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The amount of the viral RNA in the serum (2×105−2×108 copies/ml) correlated with that in the liver tissue (108−1011 copies/g) (N=23,r=0.727,P<0.0001). One gram of the infected liver tissue contained 102−104 (geometric mean, 103,N=23) times as many copies of the viral RNA as did 1 ml of the serum. Liver tissues of chronic aggressive hepatitis contained significantly higher amounts of the viral RNA than those of chronic persistent hepatitis (P<0.05). These observations suggested that this method is useful to evaluate viral amount, and the amount of the circulating hepatitis C virus RNA could be used as a marker of the intrahepatic viral amounts, which might contribute to disease activity.