A Cautionary Tale: Fatal Lactic Acidosis Complicating Nucleoside Analogue and Metformin Therapy

mining subcellular localization of HCVgenomic RNA in lymphocytes. The aim of our study was merely to determine whether the cervical smear cells obtained from HCV-seropositive women were infected with HCV genomic RNA. We will include the subcellular staining of HCVinfected cells in our continuing study. FISH was performed in accordance with the protocol by Pinkel et al. [3]. The sequence of the 5′-fluorescein labeled oligonucleotide probe used in our study is an HCV-specific primer that has been published [4]. HCV contains a positivestranded RNA genome of ∼9401 nucleotides, consisting of a single, uninterrupted, long open-reading frame that encodes a polyprotein of 3010–3011 amino acids. The gene sequence of the nucleocapsid protein is the region of highest stability (97%–100%) in the HCV genome; this suggests that the oligonucleotide probe is the genomic sequence of the nucleocapsid protein. If so, then the FISH signal is due to the presence of viral genomic RNA. As for the presentation, in table 2 of our article [2], of hemoglobin amounts for the cervical smear samples, the cervical specimens were washed before RT-PCR. Thus, the last wash samples analyzed by PCR were negative for HCV.