New Tools in HCV Diagnosis, in Light of the Enhanced Awareness and the New Drugs for Treatment: SMARTube and Stimmunology

Table 1

Prevalence of HCV antibody positive individuals detected using regular plasma.

Risk of HCV transmission	Population/cohort studied	Country	Total samples tested	Serology positive**	HCV prevalence rate
Suspected HCV infection	Timisoara hospital patients, with suspected HCV infection [114]*	Romania	143	27	18.90%
	Testing of individuals, 1–3 weeks after reported suspected exposure to HCV	Romania	40	7	17.5%
	Hacettepe University Hospital patients with suspected HCV infection	Turkey	500	22	4.4%
Populations with high risk of HCV transmission	Seronegative individuals with very high risk of HCV transmission	Israel	67	4	5.97%
	Intravenous drug users, (Sichuan Province)	China	653	389	59.57%
	Discordant (HIV) couples—patients of Moscow AIDS Center [109]*	Russia	24	6	25%
	Patients of Budapest AIDS center [115]*	Hungary	206	25	12.13%
General populations with low risk behavior and unknown HCV prevalence	Ethiopian immigrants in Israel, unknown prevalence of HCV in population	Israel	238	3	1.26%
	Unknown prevalence of HCV in population (Hebei Province), infection due to bad medical practices in the past	China	583	139	23.84%
	Kogalym hospital patients and medical staff, population with mixed risk level	Russia	330	7	2.12%
	Replacement blood donors in Kenyatta blood bank, unknown prevalence	Kenya	294	8	2.72%
Low risk populations	Healthy blood donors (Tel Aviv)	Israel	625	0	0
	Healthy blood donors (Beijing)	China	1552	4	0.26%
	Healthy blood donors (Bucharest)	Romania	608	0	0
	Healthy blood donors (Moscow)	Russia	25	0	0

*Data was presented at a local conference.
**HCV seropositives, confirmed by local algorithms.