Us de tècniques d'ampliació genètica (PCR) en l'estudi de la variabilitat de genoma del virus de l'hepatitis C en relació amb l'evolució clínica de la infecció, i en el clonatge i se...

Non A non B hepatitis is a leading health problem in most countries.The recent isolation by cloning of the agent causing this disease,already designated hepatitis C virus (HCV), has lead to thedevelopment of immunoassays for detection of specific antibodies ininfected individuals. However, the prospective study of efficiencycarried out in our laboratory, reveals that this method onlyidentifies 65% of HCV infectious donors. The availability ofcollected plasma samples from prospectively followed patients, duringongoing studies on postransfusion hepatitis, along with the use ofprobes and primers for the detection of circulating HCV throughgenetic amplification (PCR), has allowed us to design the presentproject in order to study the genetic variability of HCV in differentpatients and in different stages of the disease evolution, by cloningand sequencing the amplificated fragments. The analys