ANALYSIS OF THE CORE REGION OF HCV GENOME ISOLATED FROM PATIENTS WITHCHRONIC HEPATITIS-C DURING INTERVALS OF NORMAL ALT CONCENTRATION

We determined the core region nucleotide and amino acid sequences in s pecimens from two patients with chronic hepatitis C during intervals o f normal and elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) concentrations. W hen the ALT concentrations remained normal, the serum HCR-RNA concentr ation exceeded that before therapy and most of the clones that could b e sequenced had a deletion or an amber mutation. The clones isolated f rom a HLA B44-positive patient had a mutation at amino acid 91. These results suggest that expression of the wild-type HCV core region genom e may be associated with liver cell damage.