[Seroepidemiologic study on the feasibility of screening for the antibody to HCV by pooling the serum specimens]

The feasibility of screening for the antibody to HCV by pooling 10 serum specimens was studied by utilizing the epidemiologic method of single blind random allocation. We changed only the ratio between the pooled serum specimen volume and the serum specimen diluent volume, with their total volume and single serum specimen volume being as much as the volume required by EIA. Other steps were the same as those of EIA. The result showed that taking single serum specimen as the control group, the sensitivity and specificity of pooled serum specimen were 100% and 97.6%, respectively. The false positive rate was 2.4%, Kappa value was 0.95 (P < 0.05). The analysis of profit found that remarkable social and economic benefit will be obtained when serum pooling method is used. These results demonstrate that pooling 10 serum specimens is feasible to screening the antibody to HCV in blood donors by EIA.