Epidemiological study of HCV genotypes circulated in different regions of Pakistan: a lab based study.

The objective of the present study was to find out the prevalence of different genotype of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) in different area of Pakistan include, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Punjab province, Sindh province and Islamabad Capital Territory. The data were collected from the different Labs and Hospitals. The present study was carried out during January 2011 to December 2012. The overall result shows that the female are more infected as compare to male 190 (50.5%) and 186 (49.5%) respectively. The high number of cases was reported from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 201 (53.4%) where the lowest number of cases was reported in Sindh 32 (8.5%). The overall result shows that the 3a is the most common genotype while the genotype 1b is reported in lowest number. The age wise distribution shows that the high number of cases 135 (35.9%) was reported in age group 31-40 years while the low number of cases 6 (1.6%) was occurred in age group >60 years. The statistical analysis of the data shows that the P-value is less than 0.05 were considered as significant. From this study it was concluded that the genotype 3a is the most common genotype in different region of Pakistan.