Virology - Hepatitis Testing Service (HTS)

Laboratory overview

Liver Virology provides a comprehensive viral hepatitis testing service, meeting the needs of patients at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as well as GPs and other hospitals.   Alongside the routine diagnostic service we also perform clinical trials work and provide support for clinical research activities.

Liver Virology operates 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. The Service is closed on public holidays.

During the period of transition of Liver Virology testing services to the Blackfriars Hub laboratory, the tests provided by this service are not accredited by UKAS to ISO15189.

Key Features

Liver Virology provides a fully comprehensive serological and molecular viral hepatitis testing service, including clinical interpretative advice to aid patient diagnosis and management.  As a clinical integrated service we provide close support to the clinical Transplant and Intensive Care Services as well as the Liver Outpatient Services.

The Service provides a fast turnaround of routine serological and molecular assays, and is able to prioritise urgent requests to meet the demands of our users including KCH LITU, Liver Transplantation Department and A&E.

This service supports testing in HCV to enable multiple treatment providers in delivering new immune & viral biomarker assays. The lab supports KCH as a global lead site for commercial HBV cure programs transitioning into clinical practice.

Liver Virology has a successful history in translational research developing, optimising, validation and implementing numerous in-house assays including: HDV RNA (Quantitative), HDV Genotype, HEV RNA (Quantitative), HBV Genotype, HBV Drug Resistance mutation screening, IL-28B Genotype (rs12979860) and HCV NS3 Q80K Polymorphism.  These specialist tests combined with routine serological and molecular assays means Liver Virology can provide a fully comprehensive specialist service for users and support broad ranging research activities within the Institute of liver studies.

The Liver Virology serum/plasma bank consists of over 10 years’ worth of stored diagnostic samples, providing a valuable resource for assay development, quality assurance and clinical research.

Clinical Team Overview

The King’s Viral Hepatitis Service, provides a high quality diagnostic service and is the largest treatment centre for the disease in the UK.  The Clinical Viral Hepatitis Team, led by Dr Kosh Agarwal, comprises of clinicians and nurse specialists, with expertise in the assessment and management of liver disease, specialising in viral hepatitis.

Key Features: The clinical team is one of the largest centre for the treatment of hepatitis patients and participated in several important clinical trials related to hepatitis B and hepatitis C patients. Together with the Laboratory team we successfully implemented several new assays developed by us into the clinical service, which improved the quality of clinical management of hepatitis patient and the ability to carry out research projects.

Request Form

The HTS request form is below. Please complete the request form as fully as possible

User Handbook

A copy of the department's User Handbook is available below