Genotyping of Hepatitis C Virus Isolates from Iraqi Hemodialysis Patients by Reverse Transcription-PCR and One Step Nested RT-PCR

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major health problem among dialysis patients in developing countries. Geographical distribution of various genotypes of HCV is useful for understanding the epidemiological status, detection of mode and source of infection, designing the program of control, evaluating the response to treatment and development of diagnostic methods and vaccine production. Aim: To investigate the prevalence of HCV genotypes and subtypes (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4, 5a & 6a) among hemodialysis patients. Materials and Methods: The prevalence of anti-HCV antibody was determined by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Then, HCV specific RNA was detected in those anti-HCV seropositive and seronegative dialysis patients, utilizing reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction technique (RT-PCR), Furthermore, Genotyping the HCV-RNA positive samples by one step nested RT-PCR technique. Results: Genotyping analysis was performed in 29 HCV-RNA positive patients. Genotypes 1a, 1b, 3a and 4 were found in (34.48%), (13.79%), (3.45%) and (41.38%) patients, respectively. In addition, two patients (6.90%) had mixed infected with both 4 and 1b. Conclusion: The genotype distribution in our study is comparable to that for non haemodialysis patients. Further analyze relatedness of HCV isolates by sequence analysis are required to trace the source of infection.