Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the world. In 2015, the prevalence of HCV RNA was found to be 7.0%.(1) The prevalence of HCV was studied in Rheumatoid arthritis in few studies(2,3), but to our knowledge, no previous work studied it in other rheumatologic diseases.~This study aims at detecting the prevalence of subclinical HCV infection in different rheumatologic disease groups in Egypt.~Consecutive patients with different rheumatologic diseases from seven- geographically different- rheumatology departments were prospectively studied. None of the patients was known to have previous HCV infection. Patients' serum samples were screened for the presence of anti-HCV antibodies. Patients with positive serology were further evaluated for the presence of HCV ribonucleic acid by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
Egypt has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the world. In 2015, the prevalence of HCV RNA was found to be 7.0%.(1) The prevalence of HCV was studied in Rheumatoid arthritis in few studies(2,3), but to our knowledge, no previous work studied it in other rheumatologic diseases.