Simultaneous Identification of Five HCV Genotypes in a Single Reaction

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is considered the major cause of post-transfusion and sporadic non-A, non-B hepatitis with elevated risk for development of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma [1, 2]. The virus is a hepacivirus member of the Flaviviridae; HCV is an enveloped single-stranded positive sense RNA virus with a genome of about 9,500 bases. The genome is extremely variable; an infected person harbors billions of virus particles which most likely all carry genomes with different sequences. Eleven genotypes including at least 70 subtypes have been described. Within one subtype the nucleotide similarity is only 76%–80% [3]. Genotypes 1–5 seem to be most important for diagnosis; types 6–11 are very rare and were found only in Asia. Types 1 (80% in Germany) [4] and to a lesser extent 3 and 2 are the most prominent genotypes in Central Europe and North America, type 4 is typical for Northern Africa, type 5 for Southern Africa. Type 3 is often related to i.v drug abuse [3, 4]. Genotyping of HCV is important because the response of the current therapy regimens and duration of therapy is strongly associated with the genotype [5].