Fig. 1. HCV RNA strands’ prevalence in PBMCs of naïve and post-treatment patients who presented with negative SRT-PCR.

Naïve cirrhotic patients had a significantly increased intracellular HCV infection, compared to naïve asymptomatic patients (p = 0.00079) and experienced patients (p < 0.000009); no significant changes were observed upon comparing naïve asymptomatic with experienced patients (p = 0.23179).