Abstract
Background:
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the main cause of infection that has the potential to cause chronic liver disease. Injecting drug users (IDUs) have a key role in HCV transmission in Iran. Knowledge of the distribution of various genotypes is essential for successful future research and control strategies.Objectives:
The aim of this study was to identify HCV genotypes among chronic infected injecting drug users (IDUs) in Tehran, Iran.Patients and Methods:
In this cross sectional study, we investigated HCV genotypes among 36 plasma samples from HCV infected IDUs (35 male and 1female, mean age: 33.67, and age range 20-62 years), referred to Research Center of Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization(IBTO) in Tehran from December 2008 to March 2009.HCV Genotyping was performed using type-specific primers.Results:
Genotypes 3a, 1a and 1b were found in 58.3 %, 25% and 16.7 % patients, respectively.Conclusions:
Our study demonstrated the high prevalence of genotype 3a among injecting drug users, which is also found in Europe and United states.Keywords
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© 2013, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.