A Retrospective Study to Determine the Genotypic Distribution of Hepatitis-C from a Tertiary Care Hospital in South India

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne pathogen that transmits infection via transfusion. Hepatocellular carcinoma is the fifth most common cancer and a major cause of death in patients with chronic HCV infection. Response to treatment is mainly based on the genotypic characterization of HCV. The gold standard for genotyping HCV is by sequencing highly conserved regions such as NS5, core, E1, and 5’UTR. Serum samples of patients who visited the tertiary care hospital with clinical features suggestive of HCV infection formed the study group. HCV genotyping was performed using multiplex Polymerase Chain Reaction in the samples tested positive by Chemiluminescence Immunoassay (CLIA). The viral loads were also performed on selected patient samples. In the present study, Genotype 4 (35.71%), followed by Genotype 3 (17.53%) and 1 & 1b (12.34%) were the common genotypes observed. Genotype 1,1b & 4 mixed type and genotype 4 and 5 mixed type was detected in one sample each (0.65%). The mean measured value of HCV antibody was 11.51 ± 4.57. The viral load was detected in 61 out of 81 samples tested. The mean viral load ranged from 550 to 552769250IU/ml (log 2.74-log 8.74). Genotype 4 was the most common genotype demonstrated in our study as opposed to the other studies were genotype 3 was the dominant one in south India.