SEROREACTIVITY AND GENOMIC AMPLIFICATION PROFILE OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUSFROM PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC LIVER-DISEASE IN INDIA

Patients with chronic liver disease were screened initially for antibo dies to the hepatitis C virus using commercially available assay syste ms. Positive sera were tested for amplification of the 5' noncoding re gion, and putative structural and nonstructural genomic regions of hep atitis C virus by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. Eig ht out of 22 patients who were seropositive showed presence of viral R NA by amplification from genomic regions. Sera from four subjects show ed amplification of the 5' noncoding region, a different serum showed amplification of the capsid region, and three other sera showed amplif ication of the nonstructural genomic region of the virus. An amplifica tion profile of the RNA-positive samples suggests genomic sequence div ergence of hepatitis C virus circulating among Indian patients.