There are two major types of hepatitis C virus in Japan |
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| Authors: | N Enomoto A Takada T Nakao T Date |
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| Institution: | Department of Internal Medicine, Kanazawa Medical University, Ishikawa, Japan. |
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| Abstract: | The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect hepatitis C virus (HCV) in plasma from chronic non-A, non-B hepatitis patients. By choice of adequate primers, 19 of 24 samples (79%) were found positive. Sequence analysis of amplified 400 bp cDNA fragments encoding a portion of NS5 gene suggested that HCV can be classified into two types (named K1 and K2) in Japan. Slot blot hybridization of the fragments indicated that 13 were HCV-K1 and 6 were HCV-K2, which show 80% and 67% nucleotide sequence homology, respectively, with that of the prototype. |
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