We screened for evidence of HCV infection in healthy heterologous monogamous spouses of chronic HCV patients and studied the relation with various risk factors. A cross-sectional study of fifty healthy monogamous heterosexual spouses of HCV-positive index cases was carried out. All participants were HBV and HIV negative. The association with various risk factors was studied. Five spouses (10%) showed evidence of HCV infection. Two partners were positive for HCV antibody alone (4%) and 3 for antibody and HCV PCR (6%). No association was found between HCV infection and various sociodemographic parameters with the exception of older age categories. Intraspousal transmission of HCV may be an important source of spread of HCV infection. The reservoir of HCV-infected individuals in Egypt is sizable, and sexual transmission of HCV may contribute to the total burden of infection in Egypt.
The extent to which HCV infection is associated with sexual exposure has been debated extensively. The 2008 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey [
There are some limitations in this study. An important limitation is failure to analyze the sequence of nucleotides of the HCV genome. The detection of homology in the nucleotide sequences would have been a strong evidence of a common source of infection but it would not clarify the direction of the infection, nor the responsible risk factors. The major limitation of our study may be the relatively small number of participants.
Our study results raise the possibility that HCV is sexually transmitted between spouses in Egypt. This confirms the need to screen all people in the so-called high risk groups for HCV infection. Due to the ongoing high incidence of HCV in Egypt, further research is needed to identify the exact routes of transmission and the associated risk factors so that preventive measures can be instituted.
Written informed consent was obtained from each of the participants after approving the study protocol by the Ethical Committee of Ain Shams Faculty of Medicine.
The authors disclose no conflicts and declare that they have no competing interests.
This work was supported by the Egyptian Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF) (Grant no. 457).