EVALUATION OF RED CELL DISTRIBUTION WIDTH IN ANTI-HCV POSITIVE PATIENTS

Nuran Karabulut*, Hakan Ayy?ld?z, Hasan Bayrak5 and Mehmet Kalayc?

ABSTRACT

Objective: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is considered a serious healthcare issue worldwide. Recently, it has been investigated the association between hepatitis B and red cell distribution width (RDW) in the several studies. Elevated RDW levels have been suggested to be a prognostic biomarker for liver diseases. Therefore, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between RDW and anti-HCV in this study. Material and Methods: This retrospective study included 46 anti-HCV positive and 52 anti-HCV negative patients who were analyzed RDW parameters. The anti-HCV positive and negative groups were matched for gender, age, and clinical diagnosis. The anti-HCV test was performed on the Triturus system by ELISA method. RDW parameters were measured on the Mindray BC 3000 Plus instrument by electrical impedance method. Results: White and red blood cell counts, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume, platelet counts parameters between anti-HCV positive and negative groups were no statistically significant. Hemoglobin and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration values were higher in the anti-HCV negative group. Red cell distribution width-standard deviation (RDW-SD) values in the anti-HCV positive group were statistically higher than the anti-HCV negative group (50.20 ± 5.37 and 44.72 ± 5.49 fL, p<0.001). Similarly, red cell distribution width-coefficient of variation (RDW-CV) values in anti-HCV positive patients were detected the increased levels compared the patients with the anti-HCV negative. Conclusion: It was detected a significant increase in the RDW values of the patients with anti-HCV positive. RDW parameters which are simple, inexpensive and used commonly in routine, may serve as a significant biomarker for hepatitis C infection.

Keywords: Hepatitis C, HCV, RDW.