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

1994; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/hep.1840190402

1527-3350

Santosh Man Shrestha, Fumio Tsuda, Hiroaki Okamoto, Hajime Tokita, Minoru Horikita, Takeshi Tanaka, Yuzo Miyakawa, Makoto Mayumi,

Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment

A total of 145 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 cause of liver disease was not known in the remaining 76 (52%). HBsAg 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 35 (34%), adr in 4 (4%) and ayw in 48 (47%); the remaining 15 (15%) were of atypical subtypes such as ad, ay and a. Of 12 hepatitis C virus RNA samples, genotype I was detected in 1, genotype II in 5 and genotype V in 1; the remaining five samples were not to be classified 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 E1 region of unclassifiable hepatitis C virus isolates from five patients differed from each other in 17% to 23%, and varied from reported isolates of defined 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.