Special Precautions/Comments:

Interferences: Interference may be encountered with certain sera containing antibodies directed against reagent components. For this reason, assay results should be interpreted taking into consideration the patient’s medical history and the results of any other tests performed.

Method: Enzyme-Linked Fluorescent Assay (ELFA). Calibration: VIDAS assay kit standard. EQA scheme: NEQAS.  IQC: VIDAS commercial preparations.

Interpretation: Results are reported as NOT detected or DETECTED. As false positives may occur with this assay, all samples testing postitive will be referred to Newcastle Hospitals Virology Service for confirmatory testing using an alternative method.

Additional Information:

Background information:  Hepatitis A is caused by the hepatitis A virus, belonging to the picornavirus family. It is transmitted by faecal-oral contact and was therefore considered to be a generally asymptomatic disease, occurring mainly in children. The fall in prevalence observed over the past few years has led to an increase in symptomatic cases in older patients. Fulminant hepatitis, which is often fatal, remains rare(0.1 to 0.2% of cases).