| Literature DB >> 14722895 |
Liselotte van Asten1, Inge Verhaest, Saida Lamzira, Ildefonso Hernandez-Aguado, Robert Zangerle, Faroudy Boufassa, Giovanni Rezza, Barbara Broers, J Roy Robertson, Raymond P Brettle, Jim McMenamin, Maria Prins, Alexandra Cochrane, Peter Simmonds, Roel A Coutinho, Sylvia Bruisten.
Abstract
To describe the spread of hepatitis C virus (HCV) among HCV/human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-coinfected injection drug users (IDUs), the molecular epidemiology of HCV was studied among 108 IDUs from 7 European countries. Phylogenetic analysis based on the NS5B region showed great sequence variation of HCV within each country and no clear phylogenetic clustering by geographic region. The most prevalent subtypes were 1a and 3a, but the percentage of genotype 4 was also relatively high, ranging from 7% in northern Europe to 24% in southern Europe. Genotype 4 consisted mainly of subtype 4d and has entered the majority of the IDU populations studied. The significantly lower evolutionary distances within subtype 4d suggest that this subtype may have entered the European IDU population relatively recently. In conclusion, HCV exchange between European IDU populations has occurred on a large scale, and, overall, country-specific clustering for HCV was less than that shown for HIV.Entities:
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Year: 2004 PMID： 14722895 DOI： 10.1086/380821
Source DB: PubMed Journal: J Infect Dis ISSN： 0022-1899 Impact factor: 5.226