Hepatitis C virus infection and genotypes in blood donors

Abstract: Genotyping of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is important for designing therapeutic strategies and regional specific diagnostic assays. The aim of this study was to identify the HCV genotypes in HCV infected blood donors. This is the first report on HCV genotypes in blood donors in Iran. In this cross-sectional study, 103 blood donors with hepatitis C were investigated for HCV genotypes. HCV genotyping was carried out using type-specific primers from the core region of the viral genome. From 103 blood donors, only96 cases had genotypes which could be typed. The highest frequency genotype 1a, with 53 (51.5%) of subjects. Genotype 3a and 1b were the other frequent genotypes with 39 (37.9 %) and 4 (3.9%)   subjects, respec-tively. These results indicate that the dominant HCV genotypes among blood donors were 1a, 3a and 1b respectively. It was also noticed that more of the blood donors infected with genotypes 1a and 3a had history of intravenous drug abuse and tattooing.