PREVALENCE OF HEPATITIS-G VIRUS-INFECTION AMONG PATIENTS WITH LIVER-DISEASES IN JAPAN (VOL 6, PG 239, 1997)

Although a new RNA virus, designated hepatitis G virus (HGV) has recen tly been identified, the clinical significance of HGV infection is sti ll unclear. To approach this problem, we studied the prevalence of HGV infection on patients with liver diseases in Japan by nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction using primers deduced from 5'- noncoding region. The positive rate of HGV RNA was 6.8% in all tested liver disease patients (45 of 663), while 1.4% (2/145) in healthy indi viduals. Among these patients, HGV RNA was detected in 6.9% (4/58) of acute hepatitis, 7% (16/229) of chronic hepatitis, 8.6% (5/58) of live r cirrhosis and 12.2% (17/139) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but few or none in non-viral liver diseases. HGV coinfection with hepatiti s B virus and hepatitis C virus (HCV) were present in 8.9 and 66.7% of these patients, respectively, while 22.2% of patients were positive f or HGV alone. In 54 patients with acute hepatitis that is seronegative for hepatitis A-E, four of them (7.4%) were positive for HGV. Liver h istology from a HCC patient infected with HGV alone revealed that lymp hocytic infiltration of portal tracts in cirrhotic liver, but hepatocy te necrosis was so mild. The majority of HGV-infected patients (69%) h ad not received blood transfusion. Nucleotide sequence analyses in fou r patients confirmed that these PCR products were derived from HGV gen ome sequences and 90% identical to those of HGV prototype from America n patients, and 97% identical among Japanese isolates. These results i ndicate that generally 6.8% of Japanese patients with liver diseases h ad HGV infection and most of them were coinfected with HCV. This sugge sts that HGV might be related to liver diseases. The routes of transmi ssion of HGV require clarification.