Hepatitis C Virus Genotypes and Resistance to Anti-Viral Treatment in Mardan, Pakistan

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infectious disease of liver, caused by Hepatitis C virus (Frank et al., 2000). Hepatitis C infection causes acute and chronic hepatitis (Kanda et al., 2013). When a person first infected with hepatitis C virus, it can develop an acute infection, which may be a very mild illness with few or no symptoms or may be a very serious condition, in which the patient might be hospitalized. Acute hepatitis C is a short-term illness which occurs within the first six months after the infection with hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a hepacivirus of Flaviviridae family (Alter et al., 1992). It is a small (5nm in size), enveloped, positive-single stranded RNA virus (Arshad et al., 2012). Its genome is 9.6 kb in size, encodes a poly protein (about 3,ooo amino acid) which is processed and release 3 structural ( core, E1, E2) and 7 nonstructural (P7, NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A, and NS5B ) proteins (Lin et al., 1994; Reed et al.,