HCV Infection among Saudi Population: High Prevalence of Genotype 4 and Increased Viral Clearance Rate

HCV is a major etiological agent of liver disease with a high rate of chronic evolution. The virus possesses 6 genotypes with many subtypes. The rate of spontaneous clearance among HCV infected individuals denotes a genetic determinant factor. The current study was designed in order to estimate the rate of HCV infection and ratio of virus clearance among a group of infected patients in Saudi Arabia from 2008 to 2011. It was additionally designed to determine the genotypes of the HCV in persistently infected patients. HCV seroprevalence was conducted on a total of 15,323 individuals. Seropositive individuals were tested by Cobas AmpliPrep/Cobas TaqMan HCV assay to determine the ratio of persistently infected patients to those who showed spontaneous viral clearance. HCV genotyping on random samples from persistently infected patients were conducted based on the differences in the 5′untranslated region (5′UTR). Anti-HCV antibodies were detected in 7.3% of the totally examined sera. A high percentage of the HCV infected individuals experienced virus clearance (48.4%). HCV genotyping revealed the presence of genotypes 1 and 4, the latter represented 97.6% of the tested strains. Evidences of the widespread of the HCV genotype 4 and a high rate of HCV virus clearance were found in Saudi Arabia

Deduced nucleotide sequence of different Saudi HCV strains based on 5′UTR sequences.

<p>Ten selected strains (TAIF.SA1-10) were included. The nucleotide sequence of (TAIF.SA1) was found identical in 75/81 of the examined strains.</p

Seroprevalence of anti-HCV antibodies using chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay.

<p>A: The total seroprevalence among the whole tested population. B. HCV seroprevalence in males in comparison to females. Results were analysed using the chi-square and the two-sided P value was 0.0034.</p

Phylogenetic analysis of partial 5′UTR sequences of HCV samples.

<p>HCV prototype sequences from GenBank were included. The evolutionary history was inferred using the Neighbor-Joining (NJ) method. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted in MEGA 4.1.</p

Seroprevalence of anti-HCV antibodies using chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay in males and females from May 2008 to May 2011.

<p>Non-significant variation was found between female and male seropositive percentages using <i>t</i> test, (P = 0.1806).</p

Percentage of HCV clearance among HCV infected population and comparison between percentage of clearance between male and females infected patients.

<p>Fisher's Exact Test revealed non-significant variation (P = 0.4714).</p