Seven-year Genotype Distribution Among Hepatitis C Patients in a City in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey

Objectives: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important viral agent of hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. In our study, we aimed to determine the HCV genotype distribution among patients with HCV who presented to our hospital in a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. Materials and Methods: Results of 480 patients who were positive for HCV RNA and whose serum samples were sent to our laboratory from various inpatient and outpatient clinics of the hospital with a pre-diagnosis of hepatitis C between January 2010 and May 2017 were retrospectively screened. In HCV genotype determination, a commercially available kit (Ampliquality HCV-TS, AB Analitica®, Italy) based on Reverse Line Blot was used in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations. Genotype distributions were analyzed by years and by age. The first and only one test results of the same patients were evaluated. Results: Of the patients whose genotyping was made, 260 (54.2%) were female and 220 (45.8%) were male. It was found that 396 (82.6%) of 480 patients were with genotype 1b, 17 (3.5%) - genotype 1a, 15 (3.1%) - genotype 3a, 14 (2.9%) - genotype 1, 9 (1.9%) - genotype 4, 8 (1.7%) - genotype 2, 6 (1.3%) - genotype 2b, 5 (1.0%) - genotype 1a/1b, 4 (0.8%) - genotype 2a/2c, 3 (0.6%) - genotype 4a, 1 (0.2%) - genotype 3, 1 (0.2%) - genotype 5a and 1 (0.2%) patient was with genotype 6. Conclusion: In chronic HCV patients admitted to our hospital, genotype 1b, which had the highest prevalence in our country, was detected with a rate of 82.6%. In addition, the presence of rare genotypes 5a and 6 in our country has been shown.