Very low incidence rates of community-acquired hepatitis C virus infection in company employees, long-term inpatients, and blood donors in Japan.

To assess the contemporary rate of hepatitis C virus (HCV) propagation in Japanese community, we conducted a sentinel study on three groups of people: company employees, long-term inpatients, and blood donors. A total of 3079 company employees negative for anti-HCV were followed thereafter, and seroconversion to anti-HCV was found in 5 per 5786 person-years. None of them was positive for HCV RNA. In the group of 703 long-term inpatients (25 of whom were initially positive for anti-HCV) none showed seroconversion to anti-HCV per 2712 person-years. As for 114,266 repeated blood donors who were initially antibody-negative, 227 became anti-HCV positive later. Of these seroconverted donors, 83 were found to have anti-HCV with titers of 2(6) or greater. HCV RNA was positive in only 3 of them. Thus, the incidence rates of acquired HCV viremia in these three groups were 0 for both company employees and long-term inpatients, and 1.78 (95% C.I.: 0.37-5.19) per 100,000 person-years in blood donors. These results suggest that community-acquired HCV infection is now rare in Japan, and that even if it occurred it hardly leads to persistent viremia.