Prevalence and genotypes of GBV‐C and its associations with HIV infection among persons who inject drugs in Eastern Europe

We aimed to determine the rate of GBV‐C viremia, seropositivity, and genotypes among people who inject drugs (PWID) and healthy volunteers in Estonia and to evaluate associations between GBV‐C and sociodemographic factors, intravenous drug use, co‐infections. The study included 345 Caucasian PWID and 118 healthy volunteers. The presence of GBV‐C RNA (viremia) was determined by reverse transcriptase‐nested PCR in 5′ long terminal repeat. PCR products were sequenced and genotyped by phylogenetic analysis. GBV‐C seropositivity was determined by ELISA. One third of PWID (114/345) and 6% (7/118) of healthy volunteers (OR = 7.8, 95% CI = 3.5–20.5, P