Clinical Performance of Abbott RealTime HCV Genotype II Test

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, a leading cause of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver transplantation, affects approximately 170 million individuals worldwide. Therefore, prevention of HCV transmission and early intervention of HCV infection are urgently needed to reduce or halt the liver-related morbidity and mortality. Combination of peginterferon plus ribavirin therapy has become the current standard of care for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients, with an overall sustained virologic response (SVR) rate of 54-63% and more favorable response rates in patients with genotype 2/3 infection than those with genotype 1/4 infection. Therefore, accurate pre-treatment HCV genotype evaluation is of paramount importance to facilitate individualized therapy in the era of response guide therapy and specific-targeted antiviral therapy for HCV (STAT-C).

Currently, direct HCV genetic sequencing for both the 5' untranslated terminal region (5'UTR) and non-structural 5B (NS5B) regions with subsequent phylogenetic tree analysis is considered the gold standard for determining HCV genotype and subtype. However, it is time-consuming and need special laboratory settings. Several commercial available reverse hybridization with type-specific probing assay (Inno-LiPA II) or simplified direct sequencing of the 5'UTR region were used to replace the two region sequencing method (Trugene HCV 5' NC genotyping kit). Nonetheless, data on the overall diagnostic accuracy varied.

The Abbott RealTime HCV Genotype II is an in vitro reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay for determining the genotype(s) of HCV in plasma and serum from HCV-infected individuals. Based on genetic similarity, HCV has been classified into six major genotypes (1-6) and numerous subtypes. HCV genotype is predictive of the response of HCV-infected patients to peginterferon plus ribavirin combination therapy. The Abbott RealTime HCV Genotype II assay uses the Abbott m2000sp instrument for processing samples and the Abbott m2000rt instrument for amplification and detection. Furthermore, the Abbott m2000sp provides automated sample transfer and reaction assembly of the assay reagents in the Abbott 96-Well Optical Reaction Plate.

The investigators aimed to evaluate the overall diagnostic accuracy of the currently available commercial HCV genotype kits (Abbott RealTime HCV Genotype II) by using 5'UTR and NS5A gene amplification and direct sequencing as the gold standard.