[Hepatitis G virus and labile blood products: role of transfusional transmission]

The GBV-C/HGV (HGV) virus was discovered a few years ago. This virus is known to be parenterally as well as sexually transmitted. However, no study has found some pathogenic roles for HGV so far. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the transmission of HGV by blood components transfused to 284 patients hospitalized in surgery unit in 1995. We tested two parameters of infection in blood components transfused to infected recipients: viral RNA by PCR and anti-E2 antibodies by ELISA. We tried to suspect some potent hepatocyte impacts by assessing the levels of two enzymes in serums: alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and alpha-glutathion S-transferase (alpha-GST). We found that HGV-RNA was detectable in 3.6% of recipients prior to transfusion and 7.5% post-transfusion. For each infected recipient, we retrospectively did a search for HGV-RNA in each transfused blood component, and we found at least one blood component as HGV-RNA-positive for each transfusional infected recipient. Anti-E2 antibody prevalence standing for a former and cured infection was 39.6% in all the recipients. In viremic recipients, ALT levels were mostly normal, while alpha-GST levels were found more commonly elevated than in non-viremic recipients although non-significantly (20% vs. 6.3%; P = 0.07). The present study underlines that HGV transmission is mostly transfusional in surgery units, and that infectiosity of blood components can be anticipated by detection of the viral RNA by PCR. Furthermore, the possible relationship between the serum activity of alpha-GST and the hepatotropism of HGV, although non-admitted as pathogenic, should be investigated.