General Question Hep C

[danpoolguy]

About 20 years ago when giving blood, the blood center said I tested positive for Hep C Antibodies. They said a false positive is possible so come back in two weeks and we will do a Riba 11 test to confirm. I did and it came back negative and they counted this as a false positive. They cleared me to give blood again.  me being the worry wart that I am I went to some local labs and did some more antibody tests and all were negative, Now the irony is that then I went further with this lab and did a PCR test and that came back positive, for Virus.   I went to my G I doctor to ask what was going on, he ran some tests  and he said you may have had the virus several years ago but your body cleared it etc etc.  Several years later thinking again I went to my G I doc and asked to run another blood work.  No Virus No antibodies, No elevated enzymes.   Its been about 20 years since the first scare, no one can really give me an answer to why that one PCR test many years ago came back positive when numerous antibody test and confirmation tests by the blood center all came back negative. Been 20 years of nothing related to Hep C, do I have anything to worry about??

Thanks  

[Dee1956]

Hi there, Nan is right about lab error I was tested back in the late 90's for Hepatitis and I got a false negative which led me to believe I did not have it until 2007 when I was dx.  It could be lab error.  I am not up on the jargon but normally they test you for HCV, if you react then they test for a viral load and a geno type.  If they find no viral load then they say that you were exposed but were one of the lucky ones who was able to fight it off.  I was told I would always test positive for HCV but that the second test would not show any viral load or geno.
I hope this makes sense.  If not someone else will be along soon :)

[nan535]

Did you consider "lab error" as a possible explanation?