The genotype analysis of the hepatitis C virus in Heilongjiang Province, China

Introduction: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major public health issue. HCV genotype identification is clinically important to tailor the dosage and duration of treatment, and recombination in intra-patient populations of HCV may lead to the generation of escape mutants, as previously observed for other RNA viruses. Up to now, there is no study assessing HCV genotypes and subtypes in Heilongjiang Province, China. Methods: To determine genotype and phylogenetic analysis of HCV in Heilongjiang Province is crucial. In this study, we amplified 3 genome regions (5’UTR, E1, and NS5B) of 30 HCV patients in Heilongjiang Province, amplified products were analyzed by bioinformatics. Results: We found that 23 specimens had concordant subtypes in the 3 gene regions (2a and 1b), 7 HCV patients were considered the recombinants, the recombination pattern of the 7 HCV patients in the 5’UTR, E1, and NS5B region as followed: 1b/2a/1b, 2a/2a/1b, 1b/2a/2a, 1b/2a/1b, 1b/2a/1b, 1b/2a/1b, 2a/2a/1b. Conclusions: The findings in the present study showed that a higher recombination rate (23%) than other researches, and the recombination of 2a/1b in the 5’UTR, E1, and NS5B region was only found in the present study up to now.