In maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is common and may be associated with poor clinical outcomes. A lot of treatment options for HCV have rapidly evolved over the past 5 years and various treatment choices for patients with advanced CKD are currently available.1 The reappearance of HCV infection months or years after sustained virologic response (SVR) may be due to the persistence of HCV in tissue cells in spite of being undetected in serum. This situation is known as occult hepatitis C infection (OCI).2 OCI is now a challenging entity in the field of post hepatitis management and follow-up. OCI is described when HCV-RNA is detectable in liver and/or peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in patients with undetectable serum HCV-RNA. To our knowledge , this is the first research to issue this problem in dialysis patients after treatment with direct acting antiviral drugs.
This research aims to evaluate the prevalence and predictors of Occult HCV among hemodialysis (HD) patients who achieved 24 weeks sustained virological response (SVR) after treatment with direct-acting antiviral agents (DAA) by detection of viral RNA in their peripheral blood mononuclear cells.