GB Virus C Prevalence in Blood Donors and High Risk Groups for Parenterally Transmitted Agents

The prevalence of GBV-C infection in voluntary blood donors and in groups at high risk for par-enteral exposure to infectious agents was stud-ied. The high risk groups included chronic renal failure patients on haemodialysis, renal trans-plant patients and haemophiliacs from Gauteng. The presence of GBV-C RNA in these popula-tions was determined using reverse transcrip-tion polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in the 58 non-coding region (NCR) of the virus. Of the blood donors, 11.1 % (95 % CI 7.6, 15.8) were positive, whereas 23.8 % (95 % CI 12.6, 40.2) of haemodialysis patients and 23.5 % (95%CI 15.9, 33.3) of the haemophiliacs were infected with GBV-C. The highest proportion of infection was in the renal transplant patients, where 41.2% (95 % CI 35.1, 47.7) were found to have circulat-ing GBV-C RNA. Serological markers for hepati-tis B (HBV) and hepatitis C viruses (HCV) were also measured as indicators of other hepatitis viruses with important parenteral transmission routes. Of the GBV-C positive blood donors, 3.6 % were also HBsAg positive and none were positive for HCV. The GBV-C positive patients on haemodialysis were not positive for either HB-sAg or antibodies to HCV, but had evidence of past infection with HBV since 40 % were anti-HBc positive. The greatest proportion of HCV posi-tives was in the haemophiliac group, 91.3%, none of these were HBsAg positive but 39.1% had anti-HBc. In the GBV-C positive renal trans-plant patients, 4 % had HBsAg, 13.3 % had anti-HBc and 2.1 % had antibodies to HCV. This is th