prevalence of hepatitis c virus genotype 3a in patients with hodgkin and non-hodgkin lymphoma

background and objectives: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is a major public health problem worldwide. replication and persistence of hcv genome have been described in the liver tissue as well as b cells lymphocyte. several investigations have reported that long-term persistence of hcv in b cells may result in hodgkin and non-hodgkin lymphoma. this study was aimed to determine frequency of hcv rna in histological tissues obtained from patients suffered from hodgkin and non-hodgkin lymphoma. materials and methods: 52 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks including 23 (44.3%) hodgkin and 29 (55.7%) non-hodgkin samples were collected and five micrometer sections were prepared. rna was extracted and cdna was synthesized. two consecutive nested rt-pcr assays were carried out for detection of hcv 5’ utr and core gene. rt-pcr products were sequenced and aligned to construct hcv phylogenic tree to evaluate the homology of sequences in comparison to the reference sequences retrieved from genbank. results: overall, 6 non-hodgkin (20.6%) and 3 hodgkin lymphoma (13.04%) samples showed positive pcr results for both 5’ utr and hcv core rna via nested pcr ( p <0.469). sequencing results revealed that all detected hcv rna samples belonged to the genotype 3a. conclusion: despite low prevalence of hcv infection in iran, high frequency of hcv rna genotypes 3a (17.3%) has been found in patients with hodgkin and non-hodgkin lymphoma. to improve treatment regimens, screening of hcv rna in patients suffered from hodgkin or non-hodgkin lymphoma is recommended which can be done through highly sensitive molecular means before and after immunosuppression status. keywords: nested rt-pcr, hepatitis c virus, hodgkin lymphoma, non-hodgkin lymphoma, genotype