Intrafamilial viral transmission is not the main cause of the high prevalence of hepatic C virus infection in a village, Putian county, China

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http://www.journalofclinicalvirology.com/article/PIIS1386653211001090/abstract?r\

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Intrafamilial viral transmission is not the main cause of the high prevalence of

hepatic C virus infection in a village, Putian county, China

Shuang Shi1, Feng Lu1, Ling Yan, Hui Zhuang

Received 16 December 2010; received in revised form 4 March 2011; accepted 14

March 2011. published online 22 April 2011.

Corrected Proof

Abstract

Background

The prevalence of anti-HCV in the population of a village, which is located in

China's Putian County, was 28.9%.

Objective

To investigate whether intrafamilial transmission is the main cause of the high

prevalence of HCV infection in the village.

Study design

This study surveyed the prevalence of anti-HCV antibody and HCV RNA and analyzed

the risk factors for infection. Twenty-seven families consisting of 2 or more

cases who were HCV RNA-positive were selected. Genotyping of HCV isolates was

performed using a restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of

5′-NCR. The identity of the nucleotide sequence, the Kimura distance, and the

phylogenetic trees between HCV 1b isolates from the same family were compared

with that from different families using BioEdit and MEGA4.0 software.

Results

Of 303 anti-HCV-positive subjects, 113 subjects were HCV RNA-positive. The

frequency of some risk factors was significantly different between HCV

RNA-positive and anti-HCV-negative subjects. Twenty-two pairs had subjects who

were both infected with genotype 1b strains. The sequence identities between the

2 isolates from the family pairs ranged from 78.9% to 98.5% for HVR1 and from

92.4% to 97.6% for NS5B, which were not higher than the pairs from different

families. The Kimura distances for family pairs ranged from 0.014 to 0.357 for

HVR1 and from 0.024 to 0.081 for NS5B. They were not shorter than that from

non-family pairs. Only 2 family pairs clustered in the same branch in the

dendrogram obtained with NS5B sequences.

Conclusions

Intrafamilial HCV transmission is not the main cause of the high prevalence of

HCV infection in the village.

Abbreviations: HCV, hepatitis C virus, 5′-NCR, 5′-non-coding region, HVR1,

high variance region 1, NS5B, non-structure 5B, EDTA, ethylene diamine

tetraacetic acid, RT, reverse transcription

Keywords: Hepatitis C virus (HCV), Genotype, Phylogenetic analysis,

Intrafamilial transmission

Department of Microbiology, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing

100191, China

Corresponding author at: Department of Microbiology, Peking University Health

Science Center, Beijing 100191, China. Tel.: +86 10 82801617; fax: +86 10

82801617.

1 These authors contributed equally to this paper.

PII: S1386-6532(11)00109-0

doi:10.1016/j.jcv.2011.03.005

© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.