Quasispecies of HCV before and after Interferon Therapy and Its Dynamic Change Detected by HMA / 中华医院感染学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE To investigate the quasispecies diversity and the dynamics of quasispecies evolution in patients with chronic Hepatitis C virus(HCV) infection.METHODS Changes of HCV quasispecies before and after interferon(IFN) therapy were detected by heteroduplex mobility analysis(HMA) and by automatic sequencer.RESULTS We found that no changes in viral complexity were observed with therapy,but there were marked changes in viral divergence.The proportion of major pretreatment variants was different in HVR1 in all patients.During the treatment,HCV quasispecies changed significantly.CONCLUSIONS HMA is a simple,rapid and reliable method for detecting HCV quasispecies.Responsiveness to interferon may be related to the changes in viral divergence,but not related to the numbers of viral variants.