HCV GENOTYPES IN PATIENTS WITH LIVER-DISEASE OF DIFFERENT STAGES AND SEVERITY

Aims/Material: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotyping was performed in 213 anti-HCV-positive patients with chronic liver disease ranging from mi nimal histological changes to hepatocellular carcinoma, One hundred an d twenty-two patients had non-cirrhotic chronic active or persistent h epatitis (including 29 who were asymptomatic with persistently normal ALT levels) (chronic liver disease group), The other 91 had hepatocell ular carcinoma and, in all but three cases, cirrhosis (hepatocellular carcinoma group), Results: The overall prevalence of HCV variants was: 54.9% type 1b, 37.8% type 2, 2.5% type 1a, 2.0% type 3a, 2.0% type 4a . The genotype distribution showed no relation to the stage (chronic l iver disease vs, hepatocellular carcinoma) or severity (chronic active vs, chronic persistent hepatitis) of the liver disease, or to the dur ation of the disease (<10 years vs, >10 years), Within the hepatocellu lar carcinoma group, the duration of type-lb disease was similar to th at of type-2 infections, Ages at the time of infection and genotype we re both independently associated with progression to cirrhosis and hep atocellular carcinoma, but multivariate analysis revealed that the eff ect of age was much stronger than that of genotype Ib. Conclusions: Th e predominance of HCV type Ib in this study reflects the higher freque ncy of this variant in our area, Our findings indicate that infections caused by each HCV genotype are capable of progressing to hepatocellu lar carcinoma.