Hepatitis C virus liver disease in women infected with contaminated anti-D immunoglobulin.
Affiliation
Department of Histopathology, Cork University Hospital, Ireland.Issue Date
2012-02-03T15:15:05ZMeSH
AdultAge Factors
Biopsy
*Drug Contamination
Female
Hepatitis C/diagnosis/etiology/*pathology
Humans
Liver/*pathology
Middle Aged
Rho(D) Immune Globulin/*adverse effects
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Histopathology. 1997 Jun;30(6):512-7.Journal
HistopathologyPubMed ID
9205854Abstract
Screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is carried out by detection of antibodies to the virus (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and recombinant immunoblot assay (RIBA)) with confirmation by identification of HCV RNA genome in serum (polymerase chain reaction (PCR)). We describe the histological features on liver biopsy in 88 women with chronic HCV infection (serum positive on ELISA, RIBA and PCR) acquired from virus contaminated anti-D immunoglobulin. For the majority of these patients the time interval from virus infection to presentation was between 17 and 18 years. We separately assessed necroinflammatory disease activity and architectural features on liver biopsy and applied a scoring system which permitted semi-quantitative documentation of abnormal features. Only three women showed liver biopsies within normal limits (+/-focal steatosis). The remaining 85 cases showed a predominantly mild or moderate degree of disease activity with interface hepatitis (56.8% of cases), spotty necrosis, apoptosis and focal inflammation (88.6% of cases) and portal inflammation (90.9% of cases). Confluent necrosis was an uncommon finding (2.3% of cases). Assessment of architectural features showed normal appearance in 35.2% of biopsies. The predominant architectural abnormality noted was portal tract fibrosis. Ten per cent of cases, however, showed significant fibrous band and/or nodule formation.Language
engISSN
0309-0167 (Print)0309-0167 (Linking)