Estimating prevalence from dried blood spots without using biological cut-offs: application of a novel approach to hepatitis C virus in drug users in France (ANRS-Coquelicot survey).

ABSTRACT: Seroprevalence estimation using cross-sectional serosurveys can be challenging due to inadequate or unknown biological cut-off limits of detection. In recent years, diagnostic assay cut-offs, fixed assay cut-offs and more flexible approaches as mixture modelling have been proposed to classify biological quantitative measurements into a positive or negative status. Our objective was to estimate the prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies among drug users (DU) in France in 2011 using a biological test performed on dried blood spots (DBS) collected during a cross-sectional serosurvey. However, in 2011, we did not have a cut-off value for DBS. We could not use the values for serum or plasma, knowing that the DBS value was not necessarily the same. Accordingly, we used a method which consisted of app

SUBMITTER: Leon L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6625185 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature