Objectives: The objectives of the present study were to determine the frequency of oral carriage of HCV and determine the influence of plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) HCV levels upon HCV levels in oral fluids.
Methods: The study group comprised 85 patients with treated (18) or untreated (67) HCV infection resident in northern Brazil. HCV 5'-NCR and NS5b regions were detected by quantitative Real Time PCR and nested block based PCR respectively in whole saliva, plasma, CD2+, CD14+, CD19+, and CD45+ PBMCs for both methods. The independent samples t-test, ANOVA and Bivariate correlation (Spearman's rank correlation) were used as appropriate for statistical analyses.
Results: There was a strong correlation of the salivary and plasma HCV in relation with levels of HCV in each PBMC compartment. The prevalence of detection of HCV RNA in the 4 examined cell types ranged from 76.5% (in CD14 and CD45 cells) to 81.2% (in CD19 cells) and there were no statistically significant differences in the prevalence of HCV between the 4 cell types. The relative risk for the association between whole saliva HCV RNA and plasma HCV RNA detection was 1.6 (95% CI 1.3 to 1.9). The relative risk for these parameters was 2.0 (95% CI 1.1 to 3.5) for treated and 1.6 (95% CI 1.3 to 1.9) for untreated patients.
Conclusion: Oral carriage of HCV is influenced by levels of HCV in different compartments of blood.