GENOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND PATHOGENICITY OF HEPATITIS-G VIRUS IN JAPAN

A recently discovered non-A non-B hepatitis virus has been designated hepatitis G virus (HGV). Blood contamination has been proposed as its mode of transmission. We studied the genoprevalence of HGV in Japanese people at high risk. HGV was identified in serum by a reverse-transcr iption polymerase chain reaction. HGV was detected in 16.0% of intrave nous drug users (IDUs) (n=25), 16.2% of those with tattoos (n=37), 10. 9% of IDUs with tattoos (n=55), 5.7% of chronic hepatitis (CH)-C patie nts (n=87), and in none of the CH-B (n=50) or CH non-B non-C (n=46) pa tients. Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels of those infected with HGV alone (n=3) mere all within normal range. In the patients wit h CH-C, serum ALT levels of those coinfected with HGV were similar to serum BLT levels of those without HGV infection. A phylogenetic tree o f isolated HGV clones showed that the HGVs of these subjects bore only a distant-resemblance to clones reported from Africa and North Americ a, and that variation in the phylogenetic index of HGV clones was smal l. These results suggest that HGV clones from different areas have gen etic heterogeneity and that HGV causes no or mild hepatitis. hepatitis . (C) 1997 Tohoku University Medical Press.