Hepatitis C induced liver cirrhosis
Hepatitis C
Symptoms
Symptoms of HCV infections ranges from mild for a few days to week and then subside or it can grow in some cases to full blown hepatitis with liver failure, but those cases are minimal. The general symptoms are almost same as any other viral infection like flu except a few signs of liver infection which sometime may not develop at all. some of the things which may show are Fever, Fatigue, Dark urine, Clay-colored stool, Abdominal pain, Loss of appetite, Nausea and Vomiting, Joint pain, jaundice. The above symptoms may develop in about 20-30% person.
Diagnosis
if any person have the above symptoms with the risk factors explained above including exposure to HCV in any means like sex, body fluid exposure, blood transfusion, body piercing and tattoo should have high risk of hepatitis C infection. There are several tests to diagnose HCV all of them included blood sampling and send it to laboratory.
The various test has different sensitivity and specificity. To name a few tests:
Screening tests for antibody to HCV (anti-HCV)
enzyme immunoassay (EIA)
enhanced chemiluminescence immunoassay (CIA)
Recombinant immunoblot assay (RIBA)
Qualitative tests to detect presence or absence of virus (HCV RNA polymerase chain reaction [PCR])
Quantitative tests to detect amount (titer) of virus (HCV RNA PCR)
Check here the interpretation of the result.