A sensitive PCR assay system for the quantitation of viral genome equivalents: hepatitis C virus (HCV).

A sensitive and reliable quantitative method has been developed for the detection and quantitation of hepatitis C virus (HCV) target sequences. In this procedure, termed "laser induced fluorescence PCR' (LIF-PCR), reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) is performed and the PCR products are detected and quantified by laser-induced fluorescence. Precise quantitation of the viral target sequences is accomplished by the use of two calibrators that are amplified by the same set of primers as the target template. A high degree of reliability is achieved by co-processing, co-amplification and co-detection of the calibrators, together with the nucleic acid to be determined. Genome equivalents of HCV containing biological samples, including samples from international test panels, were accurately quantitated with this procedure.