Hepatitis C Diagnosis and Tests for HCV: Antibody, PCR, and More

You can be infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and have no symptoms. Your doctor could find it when they check your blood and see that your level of certain liver enzymes is high. If that happens, they’ll follow up with other tests to confirm you have the disease.

The CDC recommends that anyone over the age of 18 gets tested at least once in their lifetime, no matter what. Definitely get screened if any of these things apply to you:

Hepatitis C Testing and Diagnosis

Doctors will start by checking your blood for:

Anti-HCV antibodies: This blood test is the first — and sometimes only — one you may get. Also called the ELISA screen, it checks for antibodies that your body releases to fight the virus. These are proteins your body makes when it finds the hep C virus in your blood. They usually show up about 12 weeks after infection. Your test will be either negative or positive for antibodies. It usually takes a few days to a week to get results, though a rapid test is available in some places.

What the results mean

Negative (non reactive). This is when your blood shows no signs of HCV antibodies. Most of the time, that’s because you never came in contact with the virus and you do not have hep C.