Screening for Hepatitis C During Pregnancy at a Toronto Inner City Prenatal Clinic

The first part of this study will investigate the incidence of Hepatitis C in pregnant women attending an inner city health clinic in downtown Toronto. All women attending the clinic who give their consent to participate will be screened by a standardized questionnaire as well as by a blood test. Blood testing will tell us how many of these women have Hepatitis C. We will then be able to compare the specificities and sensitivities of targeted screening (risk behaviour questionnaires) versus universal screening (blood tests).

In the second part of the study we will follow the pregnancies of those women who were identified as Hepatitis C positive on the screening test. Follow- up will include liver enzymes and viral load quantifications (amounts) in the first, second and third trimesters as well as during delivery and six weeks post-partum. We will also document pregnancy outcomes with regard to type of delivery and complications. Pregnancy outcomes will be compared to an age and race matched group of women who do not have Hepatitis C.

Study Hypothesis:

We expect a higher incidence of Hepatitis C in this inner city population compared to the general Canadian pregnant population (0.9%). We predict an HCV seroprevalence (rate) ranging between 2-6% in this population and we also predict that targeted screening by standardized questionnaire will fail to identify half of the Hepatitis C positive cases.

By following this group of Hepatitis C positive women through pregnancy, we expect to lend further support to previous data showing significant decrease and/or normalization of serum transaminases as well as significant increase in HCV viral load by third trimester. We also expect to see no significant differences in pregnancy outcomes or obstetrical complications between HCV positive women and the HCV negative women.