| Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important public health problem because it is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepato-cellular carcinoma worldwide. The most striking feature of this virus is its ability to induce chronic infection in at least 80% of infected individuals. The recent studies have shown that the chronicity of HCV infection relates to both viral factors and host factors.HCV is a single - stranded positive sense RNA virus, the whole genome displaying a higher degree of genetic variability. HCV exists as a highly heterogenous population of closely related variants in vivo, which is called quasispecies. In recent years, several studies have shown that not only HCV quasispecies nature is strongly correlated with chronic infection, but also the evolutionary dynamics of the viral quasispecies during the acute phase of hepatitis C can predicts whether the infection will resolve or become chronic. However, the evidence is still preliminary. Comparative study of HCV quasispecies of the patients with acute and chronic infection is rare, the investigations of the relationship between the duration of HCV infection and HCV quasispecies are fewer. Thus, to explore the relationship between HCV quasispecies and HCV persistent infection , HCV quasispecies of 30 patients with hepatitis C was detected by single - strand conformation polymor-phism (SSCP) analysis.Materials and methodsThe serum samples of 30 patients with hepatitis C were used in this study. The study group consisted of 8 patients with acute hepatitis, 15 patients with chronic hepatitis and 7 patients with liver cirrhosis. The diagnosis was based on the diagnosis criteria of communicable and parasitic disease branch of China Medical Association. The serum of all patients were HCVRNA(5'NC) positive and the markers of other hepatitis virus were negative, and none of the patients had received any immunosuppressive drug and interferon before the study. HCVR-NA(HVR1) was tested by RT - PCR, and the number of HCV qua-sispecies was detected by SSCP analysis. To study the relationship between HCV quasispecies and chronic infection of HCV, the number of bands in SSCP analysis was compared among clinical types, transmission routes and age, sex, ALT levels, duration of HCV infection.ResultsThe average number of SSCP bands per sample was 4. 7 with a range from 2 to 9. In the present study , the average number of HCV quasispecies in the patients with acute hepatitis, chronic hepatitis and liver cirrhosis was 3. 13, 5. 07, 5. 57, respectively. The number of viral quasispecies in the patients with chronic hepatitis and liver cirrhosis was significantly higher than that in the patients with acute hepatitis C (P < 0.05). However, the number of viral quasispecies in the patients with chronic hepatitis was not significantly higher than thatin the patients with liver cirrhosis (P >0. 1 ).In the present study, the average number of SSCP bands in 17 patients whose infection was caused by blood transfusion or blood products was 5.3 (range 3 -9) , the average number of SSCP bands in 11 patients whose infection was acquired by sporadic infection was 3.9 (range 2 -7) , the difference between the posttransfusion and sporadic hepatitis groups was significant ( P <0. 05) . However, in 2 patients whose infection was acquired by I. V. drug use, the average number of SSCP bands was 3.5 ( range 3-4 ) , no significant difference was found between the I. V. drug use and sporadic hepatitis groups.In the present study, statistical analysis of the results revealed that age, sex, ALT levels were not correlated with the number of bands in SSCP analysis. The number of SSCP bands in the 22 patients with chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis was significant correlation with the duration of HCV infection.DiscussionIn the present study,3. 13 ±1.07,5.07 ±1.48 and 5. 57 ±2.15 SSCP bands were detected in 8 patients with acute hepatitis, 15 patients with chronic hepatitis and 7 patients with liver cirrhosis, respectively. The number of viral quasispecie... |
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