Evaluate the prevalence of CCP and RF antibodies as a marker for diagnosis and progression of Rheumatoid Arthritis disease and assess the prevalence of HCV in RA patients

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease characterized by the presence of autoantibodies like rheumatoid factor (RF). In the last few years, several other autoantibodies have been described of which anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibody is the most specific. Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) has extrahepatic autoimmune properties and a variety of autoantibodies were found in patients with HCV. This study is conducted to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of Anti-CCP in compare with RF in RA patients and assess their association with severity of the disease and evaluate if HCV have been one of the infectious agent for rheumatoid arthritis. Sixty blood samples were collected from RA patients and twenty from both apparently healthy group and HCV patients. The serum from each subject was tested for anti- CCP, RF and anti HCV by enzyme- linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Estimation of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) by Westergreen method was included in this study. The result indicated that anti-CCP postivity for RA patients sera (78.3%), (20%) for HCV patients and (0.0%) for healthy group, it showed highly significant differences in RA group in compare with control group (P 0.005).While the percentage of RF positive was (70%) for patients with rheumatoid arthritis with significant differences and 20% for patients with viral hepatitis type (c) with no significant differences in compare with control group (5%). Results also showed that (1.7%) of patients with rheumatoid arthritis showed positive result to HCV.