Genotyping 238 HBV strains using type-specific primer PCR combined with type-specific nucleotide analysis / 中华肝脏病杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To establish a set of suitable and reliable methods for HBV genotyping and to study the distribution of HBV genotypes.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Type-specific nucleotides were searched through alignment of S genes (more than 1000 sequences) listed in GenBank. Then, type-specific primers were designed and type-specific primer PCR was used to genotype the 238 HBV strains. S genes of the untyped strains were further amplified and sequenced to find out their genotypes with type-specific nucleotide analysis.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>All the 238 HBV strains were genotyped. 159 (66.8%) cases were genotype B, 69 (28.9%) were genotype C, 6 (2.5%) were mixtures of genotypes B and C and 4 (1.6%) were mixtures of genotypes B and D. No genotypes of A, E, F, G, and H were found.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Genotypes B and C are the most common types for HBV strains. Mixtures of genotypes B and C or genotypes B and D coinfection rarely existed. There is no relationship between the gender of the patients and HBV genotypes (X2 = 0.794, P more than 0.05).</p>