CONFIRMATION OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUS TRANSMISSION THROUGH NEEDLESTICK ACCIDENTS BY MOLECULAR EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS

To document the transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) through needle stick accidents, 3 health workers who acquired HCV through such accide nts and their HCV donor patients were studied using molecular evolutio nary analysis based on the HCV E2 region. At least six clones were seq uenced from each subject. Nucleotide substitutions were estimated by t he six-parameter method, and a phylogenetic tree was constructed by th e neighbor-joining method. HCV isolates from the donor patient and the recipient were nested in one monophyletic cluster; this clustering wa s confirmed to be statistically significant by bootstrap analysis. The nucleotide divergence among the isolates from the recipient was alway s smaller than that from the donor, supporting the notion that the dir ection of transmission was from the donor to the recipient. These find ings provide evidence, at a molecular evolutionary level, that HCV was transmitted through needlestick accidents.