Hepatitis C Core Antigen Testing for Diagnosis of Hepatitis C Virus Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Diagnosis of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection requires both a positive HCV antibody screen and confirmatory nucleic acid testing (NAT). Testing for hepatitis C virus core antigen (HCVcAg) is a potential alternative to NAT.

Purpose

To evaluate the accuracy of diagnosis of active HCV infection among adults and children for 5 HCVcAg tests compared with NAT.

Data sources

EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from 1990 through 31 March 2016.

Study selection

Case-control, cross-sectional, cohort, or randomized trials that compared any of 5 HCVcAg tests with an NAT reference standard.

Data extraction

2 independent reviewers extracted data and assessed quality using an adapted QUADAS-2 (Quality As

SUBMITTER: Freiman JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5345254 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature