Purpose of the study: We evaluated the presence of HCV in the peritoneal effluents of viraemic patients treated with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) to evaluate the risk of transmitting the infection with this procedure.
Procedure: Fifteen of 81 CAPD patients (18.5%) had anti-HCV antibodies and eight were viraemic. At the beginning of CAPD two of the viraemic patients had ascites with a clinical picture of chronic active hepatitis and cirrhosis. Peritoneal dialysates were collected after an overnight exchange with 1.36% glucose and after a 4-h exchange with 3.86% glucose. Fluids from the overnight exchange were spun to obtain a cellular pellet and the supernatant 100-fold concentrated.
Results: No viral genome could be detected in unconcentrated samples and in cellular pellets, while HCV-RNA at low titre was detected in concentrated dialysates from the two patients with active liver disease.
Conclusions: Our findings confirm that HCV may be present in the CAPD effluent of some patients; however, the titre of virus in the effluent was extremely low, at the limit of detection of the PCR assay. Peritoneal fluids originating from patients with HCV associated severe liver disease may be a potential source of infection.