Identification of a New HCV Subtype 6xg Among Injection Drug Users in Kachin, Myanmar

This study has several limitations. Frist, HCV exists in a quasispecies form in human body (Martell et al., 1992). It will be better to obtain a single full-length genome sequence from a single virus. However, because of failure in amplification of near full-length HCV genome (>5000 bps), we amplified and sequenced 10 overlapping HCV genomic segments to obtain the whole genome sequence. Therefore, the genomic sequences obtained in this study contain some ambiguous (or degenerate) nucleotides (quasispecies population). Second, previous studies showed that vast majority of IDUs in Yunnan, especially in the China-Myanmar border area, were male (Zhou et al., 2011, 2012; Li et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2018b). Similarly, only few female IDUs’ samples were available in this study. Although no significant difference in HCV positive rate was observed between male and female IDUs (Table 1), we were unable to determine whether the gender has an effect on demographic characteristics and HCV subtype distribution due to relatively small sample size of female IDUs. Third, in addition to the identification of HCV 6xg, we found that the strain KS88 might also be a potential new subtype of HCV genotype 6. Because only one sample was found to carry this strain, which did not meet the criterion that the virus strain of a new subtype must be identified in at least three epidemiologically unlinked individuals, we did not perform further analysis of this strain. Whether the strain KS88 is a n...
Source: Frontiers in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Source Type: research