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.

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