Molecular characterization of different subgenomic regions of hepatitis C virus genotype 6 in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hepatitis C Virus “HCV” is the major factor to develop the chronic liver disease. Accurate genotyping is important to decide the choice and duration of therapy. The most common method for the determination of the genotype in HCV is the direct sequencing of the 5’UTR region, CORE, CORE/E1 and NS5B region. The current study is to compare different subgenomic regions for the molecular characterization of genotype 6 in Hong Kong and study the molecular epidemiology by phylogenetic analysis. Ninety-four patients were included in the study from 2006 to 2009. There was no discordant result between different subgenomic regions. The percentage of the patients sequenced from CORE, CORE/E1 and NS5B were 95%, 93% and 78% respectively. All the HCV strains were genotype 6a except two patients were other subtypes of genotype 6. The phylogenetic analysis in the neighbor-joining tree in CORE/E1 and NS5B region can clearly discriminate between the subtypes of genotype 6, however it cannot show in the NJ tree of the CORE region sequences. It is to conclude that CORE/E1 is the best choice both for the characterization of genotype 6 and used for phylogenetic analysis in the study.