Comparative evaluation of Elecsys, Atellica, and Alinity assays for measuring the anti-Hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of liver diseases in Korea. Anti-HCV assays are used to screen for HCV infection. Here, we assessed the agreement and diagnostic performances of three different anti-HCV assays. Methods: We analyzed 1180 samples using three assay systems-Elecsys Anti-HCV II (Roche Diagnostics), Atellica IM aHCV (Siemens Healthineers), and Alinity s Anti-HCV (Abbott Diagnostics)-and evaluated the agreements between the results and diagnostic performances. Results: The Cohens kappa coefficients between the Roche and Siemens, Siemens and Abbott, and Roche and Abbott systems were 0.837, 0.961, and 0.849, respectively. The Fleiss kappa coefficient among the three systems was 0.883. The sensitivities and positive predictive values were 86.5 and 89.8 for Roche, 97.5 and 98.1 for Siemens, and 99.4 and 98.2 for Abbott, respectively. The area under the curves of the anti-HCV signal to cutoff (S/Co) ratios or cutoff index for predicting viremia in the Roche, Siemens, and Abbott systems were 0.432, 0.641, and 0.676, respectively; the optimal S/Co ratio was 14.715 for Siemens and 14.42 for Abbott. Conclusions: All three assays showed excellent diagnostic performance; however, anti-HCV values need to be used with caution to predict viremia; therefore, supplementary tests are necessary to confirm viremia status, especially for samples with low values.

Automated summary

The three anti-HCV assays showed excellent diagnostic performance, but caution is needed when using anti-HCV values to predict viremia. Supplementary tests are necessary to confirm viremia status, especially for samples with low values.