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Drift in the hypervariable region of the hepatitis C virus during 27 years in two patients
Author(s) -
Gao Guang,
Buskell Zelma,
Seeff Leonard,
Tabor Edward
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of medical virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1096-9071
pISSN - 0146-6615
DOI - 10.1002/jmv.10170
Subject(s) - viral quasispecies , hypervariable region , virology , hepatitis c virus , biology , virus , polymerase chain reaction , viral disease , genome , antibody , gene , genetics
Serial serum samples were obtained over a 27‐year period from a hepatitis C virus (HCV)‐infected patient and from a nurse who appeared to become infected by this patient. The hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) and 5′noncoding region (5′NCR) of the HCV genome were amplified from each serum sample by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and cloned. In the first serum specimen from the patient and the first two serum specimens from the nurse, most of the 20 clones from each serum sample had one common sequence in the HVR1 gene. All later serum samples contained a heterogeneous mixture of HCV quasispecies. The uniformity of the HVR1 sequence in the early samples and the emergence of greater diversity in later serum samples is consistent with the apparent transmission of HCV between the patient and nurse and the eventual emergence of other quasispecies as the virus replicated in the new host. In addition, the immune globulin given to the nurse may have been responsible for some of the HCV quasispecies changes observed in her serum. J. Med. Virol. 68: 60–67, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.