Use for determination of active ongoing HCV infection, monitoring of longer term disease progression and response to antiviral therapies.
Blood sample (plasma)
Pink top EDTA (6ml)
For electronic requesting using EPIC (RDUH ONLY):
Search for: ‘Hepatitis C Quantitative PCR‘ or test code ‘LAB887‘
Samples from patients known to have blood transmissible viral infections should be clearly labelled “High Risk” or “Danger of Infection”.
Please state if patient is on antiviral treatment.
If this is post inoculation injury monitoring following injury from a known HCV +ve donor, send a sample within 48 hours of injury. Include details of the incident, i.e. date, and name/hospital number of the donor (with their consent).
Processed locally in Microbiology at RDUH
8 days
Viral loads will be reported in IU/ml and where appropriate a log will be given.
Limit of Detection (LoD) 15 IU/ml
Lower Limit of Quantitation (LLoQ) 15 IU/ml
Upper Limit of Quantitation (ULoQ) 100,000,000 IU/mL
Roche Cobas 6800
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hepatitis-c-guidance-data-and-analysis
(Key words: HepC)
Specimen Labelling Procedure
9018
