Contrary to HIV, hepatitis C virus is not associated with erythrocytes in vivo

HCV-RNA in whole blood compared to erythrocytes pool in HCV chronically infected patients. The erythrocyte pool of HCV-RNA (IU/ml: International Units per milliliter) was compared to the total amount of HCV-RNA (IU/ml) recovered in whole blood (plasma+erythrocytes). Sixty-five of the samples had a negative erythrocyte HCV viral load i.e. below the threshold (bold line: 600IU/ml) of the quantitative PCR assay. The 57 positive samples had an erythrocyte HCV viral load distributed as follow: 46 below 1% of the total viral load—10 below 10% of the total viral load. Only one sample had a HCV RNA erythrocyte viral load just above 10%.