Screening for Hepatitis C Virus Infection: Table 2. Additional Studies on the Diagnostic Accuracy of Third-Generation Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays for Anti-Hepatitis C Virus Antibodies

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Study, Year (Reference)	Patients Studied	Reference Assay	Prevalence of Positive Results on Anti-HCV ELISA	Sensitivity	Specificity	Positive Predictive Value	Quality Rating
Huber et al., 1996⁸⁷	Patients admitted because of acute liver disease or suspected chronic hepatitis	PCR	10% (107/1090)	94% (107/114)	97% (946/976)	78% (107/137)	Good
Prince et al., 1997⁸⁹	Blood donors with elevated alanine aminotransferase levels	PCR	18% (54/301)	100% (51/51)	98.8% (247/250)	94% (51/54)	Fair Narrow patient spectrum
Busch et al., 2000⁸⁸	Blood donors with positive screening test who were retested	Second-generation RIBA or PCR	100% (1091/1091)	99.2% (1082/1091)	Not calculable	Not calculable	Fair Performance of reference assays not standardized, narrow patient spectrum
* ELISA = enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; HCV = hepatitis C virus; PCR = polymerase chain reaction; RIBA = recombinant immunoblot assay.