Viral RNA was purifi ed from clinical specimens by using the Viral RNA Mini and RNeasy Mini kits (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany). Detection of hCV RNA was done in pools of 2-10 specimens by using quantitative realtime reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) and nested RT-PCR specifi c for the viral 5′ untranslated region (5′-UTR), as described (6) . Amplifi cation of further hCV genomic regions from individual positive specimens was conducted by using ≈20 sets of different nested RT-PCRs (primers available on request from C.D.).