ArticleHealth science reports2021
The performance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody point-of-care tests on oral fluid or whole blood and dried blood spot testing for HCV serology and viral load among individuals at higher risk for HCV in South Africa.
Article in Health science reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Balancing Efficiency and Accuracy in Hepatitis C Rapid Antibody Testing: Insights From a Cluster Randomised Crossover Trial.Journal of viral hepatitis · 2025Trial
- Dried Blood Spot: A Tool to Ensure Broad Access to Hepatitis D Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Monitoring.Liver international : official journal of the International Association for the Study of the Liver · 2026Article
- Hepatitis C missed diagnostic opportunities: The role of reflex viral load testing in the era of direct acting antivirals, a descriptive South African study from 2017 to 2021.Southern African journal of infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Sensitivity and specificity of dried blood spot samples for hepatitis C virus RNA testing.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Article
- A simplified point-of-service model for hepatitis C in people who inject drugs in South Africa.Harm reduction journal · 2023Article
- Quality Assurance for Hepatitis C Virus Point-of-Care Diagnostics in Sub-Saharan Africa.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Article
- Article
- Hepatitis C Diagnosis: Simplified Solutions, Predictive Barriers, and Future Promises.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- The performance of hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody point-of-care tests on oral fluid or whole blood and dried blood spot testing for HCV serology and viral load among individuals at higher risk for HCV in South Africa.Health science reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsTo enhance screening and diagnosis in those at-risk of hepatitis C virus (HCV), efficient and improved sampling and testing is required. We investigated the performance of point-of-care (POC) tests and dried blood spots (DBS) for HCV antibody and HCV RNA quantification in individuals at higher risk for HCV (people who use and inject drugs, sex workers and men who have sex with men) in seven South African cities.
methodsSamples were screened on the OraQuick HCV POC test (471 whole blood and 218 oral fluid); 218 whole blood and DBS paired samples were evaluated on the ARCHITECT HCV antibody (Abbott) and HCV viral load (COBAS Ampliprep/COBAS TaqMan version 2) assays. For HCV RNA quantification, 107 dB were analyzed with and without normalization coefficients.
resultsPOC on either whole blood or oral fluid showed an overall sensitivity of 98.5% (95% CI 97.4-99.5), specificity of 98.2% (95% CI 98.8-100) and accuracy of 98.4% (95% CI 96.5-99.3). On the antibody immunoassay, DBS showed a sensitivity of 96.0% (95% CI 93.4-98.6), specificity of 97% (95% CI 94.8-99.3) and accuracy of 96.3% (95% CI 93.8-98.8). A strong correlation (
conclusionThe POC test performed sufficiently well to be used for HCV screening in at-risk populations. DBS for diagnosis and quantification was accurate and should be considered as an alternative sample to test. POC and DBS can help scale up hepatitis services in the country, in light of our elimination goals.
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