Enomoto A, Yoshino S, Hasegawa H, Komatsu T, Sasahara H, Takano S, Esumi M
Department of Pathology, Nihon University School of Medicine, 30-1, Ooyaguchikami-machi, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 173-8610, Japan.
J Viral Hepat. 2001 Mar;8(2):148-53. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2893.2001.00261.x.
Blood loss during treatment carries a potential risk for the transmission of blood-borne pathogens in hospital patients. To determine whether nosocomial transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) occurs in surgical wards and dental hospitals, we tested anti-HCV antibodies and HCV RNA in sera from these patients and analysed the hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) sequence of HCV phylogenetically in the HCV RNA-positive patients. Five of 83 patients from a surgical ward were positive for HCV RNA, and six patients from one dental hospital and nine patients from a second were found to be positive for HCV RNA during the examination period. The HVR1 sequences were amplified from these patients' serum, and after subcloning, multiple clones of the HVR1 sequence from each patient were determined. The phylogenetic analysis of these sequences showed that HVR1 species from each patient could be classified into one to three genetic clusters of HVR1 quasi-species and that these clusters were independent of each other among patients. Thus, there was no evidence of HCV transmission in our study, and unrecognized transmission of HCV may be a rare event in surgical and dental patients at university hospitals.
治疗期间的失血对医院患者存在血源性病原体传播的潜在风险。为了确定丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）在外科病房和牙科医院是否发生医院内传播，我们检测了这些患者血清中的抗-HCV抗体和HCV RNA，并对HCV RNA阳性患者的HCV高变区1（HVR1）序列进行了系统发育分析。外科病房的83名患者中有5名HCV RNA呈阳性，在检查期间，一家牙科医院的6名患者和另一家牙科医院的9名患者被发现HCV RNA呈阳性。从这些患者的血清中扩增出HVR1序列，亚克隆后，确定了每个患者HVR1序列的多个克隆。这些序列的系统发育分析表明，每个患者的HVR1种类可分为1至3个HVR1准种遗传簇，且这些簇在患者之间相互独立。因此，在我们的研究中没有HCV传播的证据，并且在大学医院的外科和牙科患者中，未被识别的HCV传播可能是罕见事件。
