TESTING

Only a blood tests can detect the presence of Hepatitis C infection. Early detection of HCV usually happens during routine blood lab testing that shows elevated enzyme counts. Extensive testing of the blood can indicate if the liver is damaged or inflamed. IF YOU HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO THIS VIRUS SOMETIME IN YOUR LIFE, GET TESTED NOW. IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Liver Function and Viral Load tests are the most common tests which should be perform by your doctor. If you doctor tells you otherwise, insist. These counts are extremely important.

Liver Function Tests :

This section is provided to help explain the various liver function tests used to diagnose liver disease Understanding the common liver function tests and recording the results is very important in tracking this disease.

Liver function tests represent a broad range of normal functions performed by the liver. The diagnosis of liver disease depends upon a complete history, complete physical examination and evaluation of liver function tests and further invasive and noninvasive tests. Many patients become confused regarding the meaning of a liver function test. Click on one of the tests below for more information.

Prothrombin Tme (PT):

Different cells have different enzymes inside them, depending on the function of the cell. Liver cells happen to have lots of AST, ALT, and GGTP inside them. When cells die or are damaged, the enzymes leak out causing the blood level of these enzymes to rise; that is why the levels of these enzymes in the blood are considered good indicators of liver cell damage. ALT is more specific for liver disease than AST because AST is found in more types of cell (e.g. heart, intestine, muscle). The AST, for instance, will rise after a heart attack or bruised kidney. GGTP and AP are said to be more specific for evaluating biliary disease since they are made in bile duct cells. In liver disease caused by excess alcohol ingestion, the AST tends to exceed the ALT, while the reverse is true to for viral Hepatitis.

The first diagnosis of your Hepatitis C was probably made due to the result of an (relatively cheap) anti-body test such as ELISA or similar. The result of this test was ' positive ', and that means that your body at some time has come into contact with the Hepatitis C virus and that the immune system of your body developed anti-bodies against this virus to fight this infection.

In order to find out, whether the virus is still active in your body, a different test has to be made: The presence of the virus has to be detected directly. For this purpose there are two types of tests available, the qualitative PCR test or a quantitative test.

The qualitative test can have only two results: Either the virus is detected, or the virus is not detected. If the virus is detected (result: positive), you know only that you do have the virus in your body, but you don't know in which quantity it is in your body. If no virus is detected (result: negative), you know that you either don't have the virus (any more), or that its concentration is so low that it cannot be detected.

The quantitative test on the other hand gives you a number for the Viral Load.

Your viral load is the amount of viruses present in a given volume of your blood More precisely, it means that the amount of Hep C genetic material found in your blood corresponds to as many Hep C viruses as the given number says. Therefore the given number denotes 'viral equivalents' (abbreviated: eq ).

The viral load can range from 'not detected' to hundreds of millions Hep C

viruses per milliliter, or up to near a hundred million IUs (International Units) per milliliter.

When you get back the result of your HCV RNA quantitative test, and when the lab was able to determine the amount of virus in your blood, then it is important to write down not only the number, but also in what units this number is given.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU KEEP YOUR OWN RECORD EACH TIME YOUR BLOOD WORK IS DONE. Take control of your health.

The volume of blood that the number refers to is usually one milliliter (ml). But some labs give the number for 20 microlitres = 1/50 milliliter. So in these cases you have to multiply the result of the viral load by 50 to get the number for 1 milliliter.

Unfortunately, there are several ways to express the viral load. So, in order to be able to compare different results, you have to know how to convert these numbers to some standard format, which we would say is just the plain number of viruses per milliliter, like 1.5 Million/ml, or 1,500,000/ml. Thanks to the WHO, we now have another way to express the viral load, the IU (International Unit).

Giving the viral load in IU probably soon will replace all other ways to express the viral load - until recently it was expressed most frequently in eq or Meq. But at the moment and in old lab reports a wide variety of ways to give the viral load still can be found.

The IU = International Unit for the Hepatitis C viral load is a unit more or less arbitrarily fixed. Labs now can take part in international comparison tests using a calibrated sample and thereby normalize their results to an international standard. So, in the future results from different laboratories should be directly comparable.

For converting numbers from eq to IU and vice versa, different labs use different conversion factors, in the range from 2 to 5 viruses per IU. If you do not know the factor that your lab uses, using a factor of three might be reasonable. That means: Viral loads given in eq/ml have to be divided by three to get the viral load in IU/ml. And, viral loads given in IU/ml have to be multiplied by three to get the result in eq/ml.

Therefore it is important to have a close look at your lab report and see in what units the result is given 

If your test results are given to you in any form besides eq/ml, call your doctor’s office and have them convert the results for you.