Hepatitis B virus subtypes and hepatitis C virus genotypes in patients with chronic liver disease in Nepal

✍ Scribed by Santosh Man Shrestha; Fumio Tsuda; Hiroaki Okamoto; Hajime Tokita; Minoru Horikita; Takeshi Tanaka; Yuzo Miyakawa; Makoto Mayumi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 595 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.1840190402

✦ Synopsis

A total of 146 patients with chronic liver disease, including 20 with chronic hepatitis, 63 with cirrhosis and 62 with primary hepatocellular carcinoma from Nepal were tested for markers of hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus infection. HBsAg was detected in 57 (39%) and hepatitis C virus RNA in 12 (8%); the c a m of liver disease was not known in the remaining 78 (52%). FIBaAg was found in 5 (1.3%) of 379 normal controls, whereas hepatitis C virus-associated antibodies were detected in 13 (3.4%), none of whom was positive for serum hepatitis C virus RNA. Subtypes of 102 HBsAg samples, from patients and asymptomatic carriers, were adw in 36 (34%)) adr in 4 (4%) and uyw in 48 (47%); the remaining 16 (16%) were of atypical subtypes such as ad, uy and a. Of 12 hepatitis C virus RNA samples, genotype I was detected in 1, genotype II in 6 and genotype V in 1; the remaining five samples were not to be claesi6ed by polymerase chain reaction with primers specific for genotypes I to V deduced from hepatitis C virus core sequences, despite high hepatitis C virus RNA titers in all of them. Sequences of 192 amino acids in the entire E l region of unclassifiable hepatitis C virus isolates from five patients differed from each other in 17% to 23%, and varied from reported isolates of defhed genotypes in 13% to 44%. These results indicate that atypical subtypes of hepatitis B virus and novel genotypes of hepatitis C virus would prevail in Nepal. (FIEPATOLOGY 1994;19805-809.) Discovery of HBV by Blumberg et al. (1) three decades ago and recent identification of hepatitis C virus (HCV) by Choo et al. ( 2) are major breakthroughs in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of viral liver disease. These two hepatotropic viruses account for the great majority of chronic hepatitis cases, from which nonviral causes are excluded, with a gradual shift to hepatitis C after HBV infection was brought under control.