The Distributions of HCV Genotypes in Hemodialysis Patients in Iraq

Objectives: The aim of this report was to investigate the genotypes of HCV in patients on regular hemodialysis in Iraq. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted to investigate the genotypes of HCV in patients on regular hemodialysis in 7 centers across Iraq. 255 subjects with positive anti-HCV antibodies were recruited in this study. Results: To confirm the positivity, RTPCR was performed. Amongst all samples, 31% (79/255) was positive by RTPCR. Then, we genotyped all the RTPCR positive samples, it was found that 39/79 (49.4 %) of our samples were typed as HCV genotype 1 including 26 samples (66.7%) as HCV 1a and 13 samples (33.3%) as HCV 1b. HCV genotype 4 was found in 34/79 (43%) of the samples while 6/79 (7.6%) of the samples typed as HCV 3 Conclusions: HCV genotype 1 was the most prevalent genotype followed by genotype 4. Further population-based study is required to investigate the prevalence of HCV genotypes.