Hepatitis C in Hospital Employees with Needlestick Injuries

Abstract
Hepatitis virus infection has been a problem among hospital employees. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is now controlled by hospital safety practices limiting exposure to blood and other body fluids and by both passive and active immunization (1). Without an antigen-antibody system for detecting non-A, non-B hepatitis virus, there has been no way to confirm this diagnosis or to establish that the hepatitis developing in a needlestick recipient was related to that of the implicated patient. Recently, the primary agent of non-A, non-B hepatitis, now designated hepatitis C virus (HCV), has been cloned (2), and an assay to detect antibody