CONTEXT Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global public health problem and a major etiology of chronic liver disease, which may develop into cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Genotypes of HCV indicate the route of acquisition, the clinical outcome, response to treatment, prognosis and control strategies. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to estimate the overall prevalence and trend of HCV...

The prevalence of concurrent multitypic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is uncertain. A sensitive and specific approach to identifying minority HCV genotypes in blood is presented. Following serum extraction and reverse transcription PCR to amplify cDNA originating from the viral 5' noncoding region, the amplified product mixture was treated with genotype-specific restriction endonuclease to ...

OBJECTIVES Microbial translocation (MT) through the gut accounts for immune activation and CD4+ loss in HIV and may influence HCV disease progression in HIV/HCV co-infection. We asked whether increased MT and immune activation may hamper anti-HCV response in HIV/HCV patients. METHODS 98 HIV/HCV patients who received pegylated-alpha-interferon (peg-INF-alpha)/ribavirin were retrospectively ana...

BACKGROUND Viral load measurements are commonly used to monitor HCV infection in patients with chronic diseases or determining the number of HCV-genomes in serum samples of patients after sustained virological response. However, in some patients, HCV viral load in serum samples is too low to be detected by PCR, especially after treatment. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to develop a high...

CONTEXT The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is classified into seven genotypes and more than 100 subtypes. The treatment regimen, duration and efficacy of HCV therapy may vary according to the HCV genotype. Therefore, the HCV genotype should be determined prior to antiviral therapy. The objective of the current study was to review systematically all studies reporting the distribution of HCV genotypes i...

The RNAs of hepatitis C virus (HCV) isolates from 62 patients with chronic HCV infection were analyzed by direct sequencing of the 5' untranslated region. Two important sequence motifs were recognized: one between positions -170 and -155 and the other between positions -132 and -117. These motifs are partly complementary. All three previously published genotypes were observed; 34 (55%) isolates...

BACKGROUND Though patients in opiate substitution programs are commonly infected with HCV, due to safety and efficacy concerns, they are rarely treated with interferon and ribavirin. METHODS In a multicenter study, HCV-infected patients in opiate maintenance treatment programs received 180 microg pegylated interferon-alfa-2a once weekly, plus daily ribavirin for 24 weeks (genotypes 2, 3), or ...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) isolates have been classified into six main genotypes. Genotyping methods, and especially the widely used line probe assay (LiPA), are frequently based on the 5'-untranslated region (5'UTR). However, this region is not appropriate for discriminating HCV strains at the subtype level and for distinguishing many genotype 6 samples from genotype 1. We investigated the capaci...

Pibrentasvir (ABT-530) is a novel and pan-genotypic hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS5A inhibitor with 50% effective concentration (EC50) values ranging from 1.4 to 5.0 pM against HCV replicons containing NS5A from genotypes 1 to 6. Pibrentasvir demonstrated similar activity against a panel of chimeric replicons containing HCV NS5A of genotypes 1 to 6 from clinical samples. Resistance selection studie...

BACKGROUND Approximately 170 million people are infected with Hepatitis C virus (HCV) worldwide, making it one of the world's major infectious diseases. There are no published population based studies about the prevalence of HCV genotypes in Bahrain. OBJECTIVES Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and distribution of HCV genotypes and subtypes among a larg...