[Detection rate of TTV-DNA in healthy medical workers]

We examined the positive rate in healthy medical workers about TT virus (TTV) which was a new hepatitis virus reported in 1997. The healthy medical workers showed a positive rate of 24%. Because there was no significant difference of the positive rate between the medical workers and general healthy persons we could not conclude that the positive rate was influenced by their profession. Generally it is known that a positive rate changes according to PCR primers used for the measurement. As for TTV as well, it is reported that a positive rate is greatly dependent on the selected region of primer. Therefore, we must pay attention to the evaluation of the positive rate for each assay system, especially using different primers.