Agha Babur Hussain, Waheeduz Zaman Tariq, Karamat Ahmed Karamat, Eijaz Ghani, Sajid Mushtaq, Tassawar Hussain.
HCV Viremia in Clinical and Biochemical Perspective.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;10(11):409-11.

Sera of 172 patients from military/civil hospitals and general practitioners of Rawalpindi/ Islamabad region and vicinity areas of northern Pakistan with Anti-HCV IgG positive serostatus were tested at Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), Rawalpindi, between July and November, 1997 for detection of HCV viremia by reverse trancriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Randomly selected 100 samples (40 viremia positive and 60 negative after PCR) were tested for serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels. For each patient, information based upon clinical and laboratory findings was recorded on a proforma to correlate the clinical and biochemical findings with the results of qualitative Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT PCR) for HCV RNA in Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients. Of the total 172 HCV infected (Anti HCV Positive), 61(35.61 %) patients were found to be viremic. Active infection was more frequent in the age of 30 years onwards. The past history of jaundice, surgical operation and chronic renal failure was more frequent with the viremia positive cases. Although, statistically insignificant, there was evidence of some association of diabetes mellitus with viremia ALT levels and its mean were higher in viremics, 27(73%) of 37 cases with a minimum three months history of interferon treatment for hepatitis C were found negative for viremia.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com