To address this point we have studied, in a group of selected patients with haemophilia, the composition and in some cases the evolution, of the highest variable envelope gene within the hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) of the HCV, which is the region more directly exposed to the host immune response.
The sequence diversity of HVR1 in 26 Japanese patients with chronic HCV infection of unknown mode of transmission (UT) was compared with 17 patients with chronic posttransfusion hepatitis C in whom only a single HCV infection had occurred (PH), and with 18 patients with hemophilia with chronic HCV infection who might have been multiply infected with HCV (HE).
To study the effects of the immunosuppression caused by the reduction of CD4 activity on the composition of hepatitis C virus (HCV) populations, we analyzed the number of HCV quasispecies clones and the nucleotide diversity of the hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) of HCV in 37 patients with hemophilia with persistent HCV infection, with or without human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).