Hepatitis C, Past or Present 2012 Case Definition

NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.

CSTE Position Statement(s)

11-ID-06

Clinical Description

Most hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected persons are asymptomatic; however, many have chronic liver disease, which can range from mild to severe.

Laboratory Criteria For Diagnosis

One or more of the following three criteria (except in persons less than 18 months of age, for whom only criteria 3 would meet the case classification criteria):

Antibodies to hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) screening-test-positive with a signal to cut-off ratio predictive of a true positive as determined for the particular assay as defined by CDC. (URL for the signal to cut-off ratios: https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/HCV/LabTesting.htm), OR
Hepatitis C virus recombinant immunoblot assay (HCV RIBA) positive, OR
Nucleic acid test (NAT) for HCV RNA positive (including qualitative, quantitative or genotype testing).

Case Classification

Probable

A case that does not meet the case definition for acute hepatitis C, is anti-HCV positive (repeat reactive) by EIA, and has alanine aminotransferase (ALT or SGPT) values above the upper limit of normal, but the anti-HCV EIA result has not been verified by an additional more specific assay or the signal to cut-off ratio is unknown.

Confirmed

A case that is laboratory confirmed and does not meet the case definition for acute hepatitis C.

Related Case Definition(s)

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Last Reviewed: April 16, 2021

Source: Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology